Mirella Díaz-Santos, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Residence of Neurology
About
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences
Director, Equity for Latinx-Hispanic Healthy Aging (ELHA) Lab
Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer's Research and Care at UCLA
ELHA Lab
710 Westwood Plaza, Room C-224
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1769
Tel: (310) 794-0292
Email: MDiazSantos@mednet.ucla.edu
Biography
Dr. Díaz-Santos completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Puerto Rico - Río Piedras, her clinical psychology/neuropsychology doctoral degree at Boston University, and post-doctoral fellowships in clinical neuropsychology and neurosciences at UCLA. At UCLA, she received an NIA diversity supplement with the Human Connectome Project - Aging, under the mentorship of Dr. Susan Bookheimer, to study bilingualism as a mechanism of brain and cognitive reserve against Alzheimer’s disease in Latinx healthy older adults in Southern California. During this study, Dr. Díaz-Santos developed and implemented a bilingual-bicultural educational outreach program offering community members and community partners culturally and linguistically congruent education about Alzheimer’s disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. These efforts lead her research towards a pilot study with UCLA’s Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR-CHIME), where she is currently employing qualitative research methodology to understand Latinx family-centered decision-making processes leading to research participation acceptance or refusal in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials. Dr. Díaz-Santos is currently leading the Latinx Dementia Care Outreach Research Program in the Department of Neurology and is the Director of the Minority Outreach Initiative of UCLA’s Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, where she is partnering with researchers to reduced barriers impacting research participation of historically marginalized communities in neuroscience studies.
Specialty
Cultural Neuropsychology/Monolingual and Bilingual Latinos/as.
Affiliations
ADRC - Outreach, Recruitment and Engagement Core
California Alzheimer's Disease Center (CADC)
Katherine and Benjamin Kagan Alzheimer's Disease Treatment Development Program