Karen D’Alonzo, PhD
Karen D’Alonzo, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Division of Nursing Science and the founding Director of the Center for Community Health Partnerships (CCHP) in the School of Nursing. The mission of the CCHP is to develop sustainable community-linked infrastructures to improve the health of communities by 1) Strengthening capacity for collaborative relationships; 2) Promoting the conduct of community-based participatory research (CBPR); and 3) Translation, implementation, and adoption of evidenced-based health interventions into community settings. Using a CBPR framework, Dr. D’Alonzo’s scholarship focuses on bio-behavioral approaches to promotion of physical activity and the prevention/management of obesity and obesogenic diseases among diverse groups of women, and the role of acculturation stress as a barrier to healthy lifestyles among immigrant women. Her NIH-funded research projects have made use of lay community health workers (promotoras de salud) to deliver health promotion interventions in the immigrant Latino community in New Brunswick, NJ.