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MIAMI, Fla. (June 10, 2003) – Hispanics
may be the largest ethnic group in Miami-Dade County, but when
it comes to drug abuse
and the social problems associated with it, this segment of the
local population has received little attention from academics
in the field.
To fill that information void, Florida
International University’s College
of Health and Urban Affairs will open the Latino Drug Abuse Research Center
(LDARC) with a $2.8 million, five-year grant from the National
Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The new
center will not only conduct studies, but will train a new generation of
researchers who will specialize in the groups that make up South
Florida’s Hispanic
community, said Mario De La Rosa, an associate professor at FIU’s School
of Social Work and the new center’s principal investigator.
“Studies into the nature of drug abuse and its societal causes and consequences
have been done for more than three decades,” said De La Rosa, who holds
a PhD in social work from Ohio State University. “As far as Hispanics,
most of the research work has been conducted in Mexican and Puerto Rican communities.
Few research studies have been done with Cubans and almost nothing with South
Americans such as Colombians, Venezuelans and Argentinians, as groups.”
De La Rosa said cultural nuances
and factors such as different immigration patterns and socio-economic
backgrounds may lead to different patterns
of drug abuse and
the consequences associated with it among the various Hispanic subgroups.
Because of that, NIDA provided the funding for the LDARC, acknowledging
a need to design
and carry out studies that will shed light on these public health problems
faced by Miami-Dade’s specific Hispanic groups, De La Rosa said.
One component of the new Center’s first projects will study drug-related
violence among the various Latino populations in the city of Miami. The study’s
principal investigator will be Ramiro Martinez, an Associate Professor at FIU’s
School of Criminology. Another study spearheaded by De La Rosa will
look at how drug use behaviors including non-drug use is transmitted
from Hispanic mothers
to daughters in Miami-Dade County.
But beyond the studies themselves,
De La Rosa said, the LDARC will train FIU doctoral students and
faculty members interested in conducting
drug
abuse research
in Hispanic populations to obtain funding to conduct their own studies.
The LDARC will help them navigate through the processes of securing
the grants
necessary
to carry out the research.
“Even one person’s whole body of work might just be a fraction of
the research needed to understand social and health issues as complex as the
problem of drug use in Hispanic populations in the United States. That’s
why the creation of this center is like planting seeds that will result in the
next generation of studies that could shed light on the nature and extent of
drug use in Hispanic populations” De La Rosa said.
For more information on the LDARC,
contact De La Rosa at 305-348-5794 or visit the College’s website http://chua.fiu.edu/ MEDIA CONTACT:
Jose Dante Parra Herrera
305-348-2716
parraj@fiu.edu
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