Daniel Chavez-Yenter, MPH, PhD
PhD, NHGRI F99/K00 Awardee, and Junior Researcher dedicated to Health Equity.
Daniel (he/his/him) is a health communication researcher at the University of Utah in the Department of Communication and a research assistant at Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah. More recently, in 2022, Daniel was awarded the Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Transition Award for a Diverse Genomics Workforce (F99/K00) by the National Human Genomic Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institute of Health (NIH). Daniel’s current research is interested in how genetic testing like cancer-specific genetic testing are communicated to racial/ethnic minorities and in particular Latinx populations. Through understanding how communication mechanisms form attitudes, knowledge and perceptions, Daniel is interested in how healthcare providers, medical institutions/organizations, and mass media communicate with Latinx populations and how this impacts their motivations and intentions to utilize Genetic Testing for health purposes.
Although Daniel has a particular focus in Genetic Testing ranging from carrier screening, newborn screening, and cancer predisposition testing, he is particularly interested in the diffusion of novel technologies to racial/ethnic minorities. Unfortunately, novel technologies are often distributed to racial/ethnic minorities at slower rates compared to their White counterparts and this contributes to health inequities in genomics research. Largely explanations have been attributed to Social Determinants of Health, and as such, Daniel uses a health equity lens to his research as a way to ensure racial/ethnic minorities can benefit from these novel technologies at the same rates as others.
Daniel graduated with a Bachelor of Science in History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science/Spanish from Michigan State University in 2011, and continued on to receive his Master of Public Health in Health Behavior and Education from the University of Michigan in 2013. Daniel, since his graduate training, has lived and worked in the Deep South for the past 6 years working within the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, School of Medicine, and most recently My Brother's Keeper, Inc. in Mississippi. Daniel's past research has focused on minority mental health disparities with an emphasis on the role nativity, discrimination, and acculturation, but he has also served on projects ranging from assessing physical activity behaviors among childbearing Latinas in mid-Michigan, completing assessment of attitude, beliefs and behaviors of Dengue fever prevention program in the Dominican Republic, and developing an overview of physical and dietary habits among adolescent and their metabolic profiles in Santiago, Chile.
Most recently, Daniel has worked chronic disease prevention programs, HIV/AIDS, and teen pregnancy prevention among underserved, primarily, African American, Latinx and other minority, populations throughout the state of Mississippi, and subgroups, such as those in rural areas, and African American men who have sex with men (MSM). Daniel has over 8 years of public health and behavioral science experience in the areas of research and evaluation, management, leadership development, and grant development, which includes monitoring the activities and performance of partners, collecting and analyzing data to assess program progress, using data to make continuous quality improvements, and conducting implementation evaluation.
To see Daniel’s full research activities, service, mentorship, teaching, and more please visit his CV.