Involved Undergraduate Student Conducts Research and Outreach for ‘Girls Invest’

Maricarmen Cervantes was born and raised in a small town named Malinalco Estado de Mexico, located southwest of Mexico City. She moved to San Diego in 2010 and then pursued her GED in 2013. In 2014, she enrolled at Southwestern Community College to learn English. During Maricarmen’s time working on learning English as her second language, she was exposed to the field of Occupational Safety, and this ended up being a big part of her Associate’s Degree. Then, when taking classes, she learned that occupational and public health correlated with environmental health and pursued her second Associate’s in Environmental Management. Maricarmen decided after her Associate’s Degree to continue school to pursue her Bachelor’s in Public Health. Maricarmen has all the requirements to graduate this May. Still, she decided to take additional classes required to become a Registered Environmental Health Specialist pushing her graduation coming December.

Last semester, Maricarmen took a data analysis class with Dr. Felner. She expressed her interest in learning more about data collection and analysis; when Dr. Reed looked for an assistant, Dr. Felner highly recommended that Maricarmen join Dr. Reed’s research team. Dr. Reed and Maricarmen have worked together for over four months on a project titled “Girls Invest.” “Girls Invest” is a mobile-technology-based economic empowerment program to reduce economic vulnerability and improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes among Latina adolescent girls. Dr. Reed explained that Maricarmen does tasks before being asked and always takes the initiative. Maricarmen keeps the team organized and is actively engaged in efforts to improve the project. When recruiting in person, Maricarmen is always willing to go the extra mile to establish a rapport with participants, as well as to make sure that participants feel comfortable and feel respected. Dr. Reed reported that when communicating with participants, Maricarmen has been known to be the one who responds to participants even when they are trying to reach project staff at odd times, like 2am!  Dr. Reed added, “Mari contributes so much to our team. She is incredibly dedicated to project goals, offers new ideas to problem-solve project challenges, and is always committed to our participants’ needs.”  

Maricarmen has many passions, including qualitative and quantitative research and data analysis. Additionally, Maricarmen is interested in health risk behaviors, especially pregnancy in adolescents’ health, which is one of the main reasons she became interested in working with Dr. Reed. Maricarmen is also interested in environmental toxicity and occupational safety. Maricarmen is juggling many jobs and responsibilities while being a full-time student. She works with Dr. Reed to conduct outreach for the recruitment of girls via social media and in-person events. She is also a research assistant for Dr. Kern and Dr. Hooshmand at the nutrition department at SDSU. She became certified as a phlebotomist to assist more in this research. She presented preliminary “Impacts of Almonds and Physical Activity” data at the SDSU student research symposium this past month. Moreover, when her schedule allows, Maricarmen goes to work at Ortiz Corporation, a construction company,  as a Health and Safety Advisor, where she has been involved in field employee training and helping to achieve literacy competencies to obtain certification for San Diego City Development Services. Despite balancing so much on her plate, Maricarmen constantly shows up for people and shows how much she cares.