Belinda Hernández, PhD
Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Department
Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) School of Public Health, San Antonio Campus
Research Interests
Adolescent Health
Health Education/Behavioral Sciences
Maternal and Child Health
Program Evaluation
Sexual Health
Biography
Dr. Belinda Hernandez is an Assistant Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at the San Antonio Campus. Her research interests include prevention of risky behaviors among adolescents; military populations; and intervention development, evaluation, and dissemination. Throughout her career, she has worked to identify and address the needs of adolescents at risk for negative health outcomes and to build the capacity of schools and other organizations to implement effective programs. She has worked on studies funded by NIH and CDC to develop and rigorously evaluate health programs and implementation strategies, including Me and You, a teen dating violence prevention program, and iCHAMPSS, a decision support system that facilitates adoption, implementation, and maintenance of evidence-based sexual health programs in schools. She currently teaches Advanced Methods for Program Planning (Intervention Mapping). Dr. Hernandez received her Master’s and doctoral degrees in health promotion and behavioral sciences from the UTHealth School of Public Health.
Contact
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 (210) 276-9021
Current Projects
Houston Collaborative for Youth in Care Research/iCHAMPSS 2.0
UTHealth leads the research arm of the Houston Collaborative for Youth in Care. This work includes developing sexual health education for youth in foster care and adults that work with them, updating iCHAMPSS, and reviewing sex-ed programs for TEKS alignment.
Code of Respect (X-CoRe) Program
A study to develop and test the usability of a sexual harassment and assault prevention program for active duty Airmen.
Me and You: Building Healthy Relationships
Me & You is among one of the first middle school programs to have been developed and shown to be effective in reducing dating violence perpetration for ethnic minority middle school youth and to include components from multiple levels of the socio-ecological model.
Me & You Too
Me & You Too is a multi-level 6th grade sexual risk avoidance education curriculum designed to increase students’ healthy decision-making, goal-setting, and self-regulation skills to have healthy relationships and abstain from sexual activity and other risk behaviors.
Native iCHAMPS
The goal of this R21 study is to adapt and assess the feasibility and impact an innovative online decision support system, Native iCHAMPS, to facilitate the adoption and implementation of culturally-relevant effective sexual health education interventions in AIAN communities.
Me & You-Tech: A Socio-Ecological Solution to Teen Dating Violence for the Digital Age
The goal of this 3 year Fast-Track STTR is to develop and evaluate a multi-level (youth, parent, school) Internet-based teen dating violence (DV) prevention program, ‘Me & You-Tech’ (MYTech), for predominantly racial/ethnic-minority 6th--grade middle school students.
Mobilizing Community Partnerships for Effective Sex Education in Middle School
Using community-based participatory research methods, researchers at UTHealth developed iCHAMPSS, an innovative, theory- and Web-based decision support system designed to facilitate the adoption, implementation, and maintenance of adolescent sexual health evidence-based programs in schools.