Volume 1, Issue 4October 2008
El Faro Staff
Liliane Cambraia Windsor, Ph.D., M.S.W., Editor
Sheila Kaupert,
Newsletter Coordinator
National Office
Jane Brooks, M.Sc., C.M.P.
Website Coordinator
This Month's Contributors
Frank Bandiera
Luis Bedregal, Ph.D.
Rubi Blancas
Mary Boggiano, Ph.D.
Raul Caetano, M.D., Ph.D.
Liliane Cambraia Windsor, Ph.D., M.S.W.
Alice Cepeda, Ph.D.
Christiane Farentinos, M.D., M.P.H.
Lori K. Holleran Steiker, Ph.D.
Irene Lopez, Ph.D.
Yolanda Martin, M.Phil.
Ian Mendez, M.A.
Manuel Miranda-Arango, Ph.D.
Antonio J. Molina-Fernandez
Luis R. Torres, Ph.D.
Monica Ulibarri, Ph.D.
William Vega, Ph.D.
National Steering Committee
José Szapocznik, Ph.D., NHSN Chair
Patricia E. Molina, M.D., Ph.D., NHSN Vice Chair
Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, M.D., Ph.D.
Margarita Alegría, Ph.D.
Hortensia Amaro, Ph.D.
Hendricks Brown, Ph.D.
Ana Mari Cauce, Ph.D.
Diana Martínez, M.D.
Maria Elena Medina-Mora, Ph.D.
Steffanie Strathdee, Ph.D.
Yonette F. Thomas, Ph.D.
Avelardo Valdez, Ph.D.
William Vega, Ph.D.
Volume 1, Issue 4
Career Diva
by William Vega, Ph.D.
You have recently been elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of your scientific contributions to health. This is one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive in the United States. Can you describe the trajectory that led to your successes?
I was raised in a Mexican immigrant household in Los Angeles, where my father was a farmworker for many years, and later a gardener – and I was his helper! I was an only child because my mother contracted T.B. when I was 3 and she spent most of my childhood recuperating in public hospitals. Thus my family experienced both poverty and diseases that accompanied it. I was intrinsically propelled toward health research interests in my professional life, albeit without a clear sense of how best to attain them. I was not an academic major in high school so my route to higher education was neither automatic nor completely logical as I made plenty of mistakes. However, I ultimately gravitated in my studies towards what I knew most about, impacts of human marginality, social deviance, and disease.
The broadening of my professional interests and increased expertise resulted from so many decades of exposure to the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Medicine multi disciplinary research and working in various academic settings including standard disciplinary departments, public health, and medical schools. Anybody that knows me is aware of how many times I have moved, partly because I wanted more exposure to diverse Latino enclaves with very different histories, and partly because I wanted to learn as much as possible from operating in different professional environments, including in direct services. I’m very curious and eclectic by nature, and my perspective is to seek the inter-connections of ideas, models, and research findings. The current explosion of knowledge is exhilarating for me. Nothing about me is “purist” about professional work.
I do believe persistence is the key to success, and not allowing discouragement to creep in via inevitable disappointments. New investigators should remember, our work is about being criticized, taking stock, and rebounding – and not feeling diminished in the process.