In this episode, Drs. Vanessa Errisuriz, Marisol McDaniel, and Alice Villatoro discuss how COVID-19 drastically impacted Texas Latinx college students’ educational experiences, including ability and motivation to learn, academic outcomes, and financial stability.

Changes in the structure of higher education from in-person learning to virtual learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic may have created additional challenges to Latinx college students’ educational experiences and plans. School closures and the transition to remote learning due to the pandemic are likely to widen the achievement gap already experienced by students from low socioeconomic and minority backgrounds. With the discovery of new COVID-19 variants, the pandemic will continue to disproportionately and negatively impact Latinx students. Drs. Errisuriz, McDaniel, and Villatoro discuss strategies that can be used to best support Latinx students.

Dr. Vanessa Errisuriz received her Ph.D. in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on addressing the disproportionate burden of obesity and obesity-related chronic illness among youth and young adults from marginalized populations, including Latinx and rural communities. She is currently a Research Associate with the Latino Research Institute at The University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Marisol McDaniel received her DrPH in Community Health Practice from the University of Texas School of Public Health in 2018. She has experience with planning, implementing, and evaluating healthy lifestyle interventions and managing eHealth applications. Dr. McDaniel is interested in sustainable structural and digital interventions that promote food security and diet quality. She aims to prevent and decrease the burden of chronic disease for marginalized communities in Texas. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Alice Villatoro received her PhD in Health Services from the UCLA and completed postdoctoral training in Psychiatric Epidemiology at Columbia University. She is a mental health services researcher whose work centers on understanding the causes of disparities in access to and utilization of mental health services among racial/ethnic minority populations, including immigrant Latinx communities. Currently, she is a Research Assistant Professor at the Latino Research Institute at UT Austin.

This episode of LatinXperts was recorded by Will Kurzner and mixed and mastered by Kaia Daniel, Karoline Pfeil, and Sofia Salter.