The University of New Mexico (UNM) has announced that Dr. Nina Wallerstein has been awarded the Fulbright Specialist Program award by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. The purpose of this award is to foster enduring connections between the people of the United States and those of other countries through a flagship international educational exchange program.
As part of her Fulbright Specialist Program, Wallerstein will undertake a project at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. This project will focus on knowledge exchange and collaboration for mutual benefit among participants, institutions, and communities in both the U.S. and abroad. Her activities will encompass educational and training initiatives in Public/Global Health. In addition, Wallerstein plans to share insights from her latest book, "Participatory Research and Empowerment: Theories and Practice of Social Participation," teaching its concepts in Portuguese at Hucitec Publishers in Sao Paulo, according to a press release by UNM.
Dr. Wallerstein, a Public Health Professor at UNM, boasts extensive experience in community-based participatory research (CBPR) and empowerment interventions spanning over 35 years. She is currently involved in an intergenerational family prevention program with three Southwest tribes where she serves as co-principal investigator. Furthermore, Wallerstein leads the Engage for Equity project—an initiative funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)—that focuses on researching effective partnering practices for improved health outcomes, according to her biography provided by UNM.
As an appointed member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee, Wallerstein has contributed significantly to developing measures for community-engaged science in health services and policy fields. She has co-produced a train-the-trainer curriculum on empowerment, health promotion, and participatory research alongside Latin American colleagues; this curriculum is now in its third edition. Wallerstein also co-sponsors an annual summer Institute in CBPR for Health, a tradition she has maintained since 2009. She is the author of more than 150 scholarly works, including numerous books such as the third edition of "Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) for Health: Advancing Social and Health Equity" published in 2018, according to her biography provided by UNM.