As an interdisciplinary researcher, Alex Rodriguez, MPH, mobilizes evidence about the preventative and rehabilitative impacts of arts engagement for mental health into practices and policies that will create equitable infrastructure for communities to thrive.
Currently, Rodriguez is a Public Health Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida, concentrating in Social and Behavioral Sciences, where she is mentored by George Hack, Ph.D. She is also a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar — the first UF student to receive this distinguished national fellowship. Through the UF Center for Arts in Medicine, Rodriguez has contributed to national and international research, including centering arts engagement as a health behavior, defining arts participation for public health, and co-authoring a WHO report on the arts and health in the U.S. She also recently served as National Research and Impact Associate for One Nation/One Project’s Arts for EveryBody Campaign, a national arts and health initiative across 18 U.S. cities.
In addition to her research, Rodriguez is a Student Think Tank Board Member for the American Journal of Public Health. Through this role, she has had the opportunity to work closely with the editor in chief of the journal and lead a call for papers centered on the implications of recent national policies on public health student experiences. She also serves as a member of the Academy Health Mental Health and Substance Use Research Interest Group Advisory Committee. In this capacity, she has engaged policy-focused public health practitioners and researchers on the role that the arts can play in supporting mental health by facilitating a national webinar and directly supporting initiatives at the annual research meeting.
At UF, Rodriguez developed the honors course Leveraging the Arts to Promote Public Health. This course is now offered as an elective for undergraduate students within the college (PHC3453) as a way to expose students to innovate forms of cross-sector collaboration in public health. In addition, Rodriguez has served as an instructor for the M.P.H. course PHC6700: Social & Behavioral Research Methods and the undergraduate course PHC6700: Social & Behavioral Research Methods. Rodriguez is also a voting member of UF PHHP’s curriculum committee which oversees approving all changes in curriculum and for evaluating existing programs within the college.
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