Advancing human health

The College for Health, Community and Policy was developed as an interdisciplinary college with intentions for students to be able to study across its offered majors as well as majors across the entire university.

All of HCAP’s disciplines inform each other; you can’t examine public policy, for example, without considering public health, criminology and criminal justice, psychology, nutrition, sociology and more.

As a broad, all-encompassing field, public health touches all aspects of the majors and studies within HCAP. Public health relies heavily on medical fields such as epidemiology, clinical medicine and biostatistics. It also intersects with environmental fields such as health sciences and toxicology. Public health is closely tied to social and behavioral fields – psychology, sociology and more – to help researchers better understand how social factors such as poverty and education can affect health outcomes. Public health also requires strong policy and advocacy skills, as it is crucial to be able to translate research findings into effective policies and communicate their importance to policymakers and the public.

HCAP alumni from every major discuss how their careers today touch public health – and illustrate how interconnected our college is.

Mary Bollinger ’10 Research Health Scientist University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Veterans Health Care Administration Doctor of Demography

Tina Castellanos ’21

Maternal and Child Health Disparities Strategies Specialist Texas Department of State Health Services Master of Public Administration

Mary Bollinger

Mary Bollinger was introduced to the field of demography while pursuing her Master of Public Health. Bollinger’s interests laid primarily in epidemiology, but when she discovered how much of that overlaps with demography, she was hooked. Now, as a researcher at the Veterans’ Health Administration, she uses her demography training every single day.

“The VA is using the public health model to try to reduce the number of suicides among veterans,” Bollinger said. “I’m working with the Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention on a model of suicide risk that will help give them an idea of where suicide activity is high.”

With this data, the VA can go directly into these communities and figure out how best to intervene for at-risk veterans. Bollinger is also working on developing a survey for new veterans, as they are at higher risk for suicide in their first year post-service.

That data Bollinger works with is very much in the public health realm, but what she does with it is very demography related. “We’re very concerned about the ways that where we live influence who we are, the opportunities and resources available to us, and ultimately our health,” she said.

In addition, Bollinger is a CORE investigator in the Suicide Prevention Research Impact Network, a Veterans' Affairs (VA) research consortium, working to accelerate VA suicide prevention research by, among other things, identifying research priorities, maintaining up to date information on current research activities, and conducting periodic evidence reviews on clinical and non-clinical interventions as well as community-based interventions. “There are currently no evidence-based, community-based interventions for suicide prevention, which can be pretty frustrating when you know how important communities are to health,” she said.

Bollinger maintains she would not be as successful in this challenging work without her doctorate degree in demography.

“The skills you’ll build in this program are just not skills you get anywhere else,” she said. “For the longest time, I was the only demographer at the VA. There are now two of us – both from the UTSA Demography program. The research we do with the BA is critical to the health of veterans and UTSA gives you the skills you need to do that work.”

More important than the skills, however, are the connections Bollinger built through the program. “To this day, I still reach out to my demography advisors for help or guidance on certain things,” she said. “It makes you feel like you are part of a large, extended family.”

Tina Castellanos began her studies with an intent to focus on maternal health. With that in mind, public administration wasn’t at the top of her list until she emailed Jennifer Alexander, associate professor.

“We had a really great conversation and it made me feel so comfortable applying for the MPA,” Castellanos said. “We talked through how I could apply my passion for public health and maternal and child health in this discipline.”

Prior to entering and throughout her master’s degree studies, Castellanos owned The MILC Group, providing education and consultation services to families in San Antonio and the surrounding areas. For more than eight years she has been a community advocate for women’s health and lactation and has provided consulting services to nonprofit and private organizations in these areas. In total, she has been an IBCLC for 11 years and worked with families across the city for 23 years as a peer support contact.

As a nontraditional student returning to school while juggling a career and children, Castellanos felt some trepidation. However, that discomfort disappeared after the first class. “Nobody ever made me feel like the odd one out,” she said, “and they all valued my experience.”

She particularly connected with Kandyce Fernandez, assistant professor, and the two co-authored a published work with Bristol University Press based on Castellano’s capstone project.

After graduation, Castellanos applied for a position with the Texas Department of State Health Services. Although she seemingly lacked experience in the public health realm, she was offered the position and believes it is a true marriage of her passions.

As a Maternal and Child Health Strategies Specialist, her role covers 28 counties from the border to the coast. Her department helps to run rural health programming throughout those regions. Castellanos analyzes the data on the counties they serve to spot trends – teen pregnancy rates, smoking rates for pregnant women, infant mortality and more – and uses that data to develop programming targeted to the communities that need it most.

Castellanos also runs a CDC grant project in Calhoun County to analyze health disparities and develop programs to help address those gaps. Every day she finds more ways that the MPA program has given her skills for the job that she never would have dreamed she’d use.

“At UTSA, I was a graduate research assistant for Maria Veronica Elias, working on border policy,” she said. “I never thought it would be applicable to my work. But it truly helps me – so much of the community that we serve are immigrants, and seeing those gaps in care and learning cultural competence has absolutely made a difference in my work.”

Castellanos credits her career now and her skillset to UTSA, and encourages others – particularly nontraditional students – to take the leap and think outside the box.

“It’s almost as if this job was written for me,” Castellanos said. “So many things I learned in the MPA program I’m using daily here, and it’s incredibly impactful work.”

April DeMendonca ’18 ’23

Program Specialist

National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders

Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Criminal Justice, Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice

A self-professed crime junkie, it seemed only natural for April DeMendonca to pursue criminology and criminal justice. Born and raised in San Antonio, the second natural choice was to attend UTSA for her studies.

On the surface, it may not seem like a program specialist position would have such strong ties to public health, but the organization provides all the building blocks needed for a society to function more equitably.

“Affordable housing is public health,” DeMendonca said. “Advancing economic opportunities in historically marginalized communities leads to more security, lessening poverty and crime. Helping to balance out that economic injustice is a crucial part of public health.”

DeMendonca is able to travel in this role, enabling her to see the changes her organization is making firsthand. “For a little while, I felt stuck with my degree,” she admitted. “But then I remembered what I was learning every day in the classroom and how criminology and criminal justice is so much more than policing.”

Sierra Hunter ’19

Manager Endeavors

Bachelor of Science in Public Health

As a military brat, Sierra Hunter moved around a lot. When her father retired in San Antonio, she knew she wanted to stay close by and enrolled at UTSA. She knew she wanted to study public health, drawn to its community-based nature and the ability it gives to help people on a larger scale.

It was only after she began her studies that DeMendonca realized how broad the field of criminology and criminal justice was. It wasn’t limited to police work or flashy detective work on the crime shows. She quickly learned the intricacies of the field, including data collection, behavioral science and more.

April DeMendonca

She joined the discipline’s national honor society, Alpha Phi Sigma, and found more doors open to her – including studying abroad in Spain.

“It was the best experience I’ve ever had,” DeMendonca said. “I made so many lifelong connections, including the person who introduced me to my current career.”

After graduating with her bachelor’s degree, DeMendonca took a job as an investigator for Texas Health and Human Services. Her duties included interviewing children and adults with mental illness or intellectual or physical disabilities regarding potential abuse, neglect or exploitation.

After nearly four years in the role, however, she felt she had reached a ceiling. She knew her work was important and effecting a positive change in public health daily, but needed a change.

Enter her connection from her study abroad experience in Spain, who had just the opportunity for her: a position as a small business program specialist for the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB). In this position, April can support small businesses that serve nonprofits through grantmaking, technical assistance and training.

“NALCAB advances economic mobility in disadvantaged Latino communities,” DeMendonca said. “We ensure that money goes toward small business support, affordable housing, financial health education and more.

At UTSA, Hunter joined a group called the Health Nest Program. These peer educators provided weekly outreach on health education topics for their fellow students, with topics ranging from sunscreen usage, vaccines and more. “I absolutely loved my time in this program, and it allowed me to grow hard skills like public speaking, engaging various audiences and preparing materials – all things I do in my work at Endeavors,” she said.

Hunter serves as a program manager of Endeavor’s Zero Suicide initiatives. Her job functions revolve around creating, implementing and managing the initiative. She provides direct trainings to the staff at Endeavors as well as community partners, and builds out processes and procedures on what staff can do when they identify someone to be at risk of suicide.

“The functionality of this initiative – and my job – is really public healthrooted,” Hunter said. “There were several classes at UTSA that really taught the groundwork of how to create a program based on a public health issue, which is my exact day-to-day.”

While Hunter loves the health-driven focus of her job, she also enjoys the blend of many other disciplines that it entails. “We leverage the idea of marketing within public health messaging and awareness, and the daily work encompasses so many other disciplines,” she said.

Hunter works with people from a multitude of backgrounds and disciplines – sometimes she is the only one at the table with a public health background. “So much of the work public health graduates do is multidisciplinary,” Hunter said. “UTSA really built that foundation for me and taught me how to maneuver those conversations when we all come from different disciplines.”

The main goal of Endeavor’s initiative – besides bring the suicide rate to zero – is to shift the narrative surrounding suicide. “As a society, we think that suicide prevention should sit in a clinical setting,” Hunter said. “But that hasn’t been effective because numbers are still high. To shift the narrative and moving it into non-clinical settings reaches more individuals who can learn the information and dive into it, and make suicide prevention a community problem to solve, not a clinical one.”

Sam McCrary ’95

Co-Director, Methodist Sports Medicine

Bethpage Consulting Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology

Sam McCrary was introduced to the idea of athletic training in seventh grade and never looked back. As an athlete his entire life, a coach suggested the idea of athletic training to him, and it took hold. After beginning his collegiate career at Texas Tech, he had to move to San Antonio before graduation, leaving him with a decision to make – UTSA, or Texas State.

“Those were the only two athletic training programs in the area,” McCrary said, “and UTSA was the only one with an internship program. I drove down to meet with Jerry Greeson and then made the decision.”

He cites that decision as one of the best decisions he could have made for his career. “I made lifelong connections at UTSA,” McCrary said. “I run a company with my former classmate, and Jerry Greeson works with us now, too,” he said.

McCrary and his classmates left a legacy of their own at UTSA that has touched every single student who steps on campus. “I was part of a group that petitioned the school to institute a facility fee, and through those funds they were eventually able to build the Student Rec Center,” he said.

The Department of Campus Recreation, established in 1998, has grown from programming in the physical education Gym and Track Field to providing over 185,000 square feet of indoor space, 10 acres of artificial multi-purpose fields and a satellite facility at the downtown campus. The Rec Center employs 26 professional staff members and 300 part-time student employees.

After leaving UTSA, McCrary spent more than 20 years in secondary schools as an athletic trainer, administrator and eventually as an athletic director. Throughout this time, he had kept in contact with many of his classmates, including one who ended up reaching out to McCrary with a job offer.

“He needed an administrator to run the company,” McCrary said, “and I jumped into this and ran with it.”

McCrary oversees 15 full time athletic trainers and 115 PRN-aligned athletic trainers. The company provides coverage for schools that need dedicated athletic training services – from middle schools through colleges and universities and pro teams – and other organizations. Their large coverage area includes both rural and city areas. In the month of February alone, their staff covered 1,900 games.

“The athletic training profession has been in a time of change,” McCrary said. “UTSA has a great opportunity to continue to serve its local students by producing athletic trainers, because we’re at a point where there is exponential growth and a real need for this profession.”

Landon Molnar ’17 ’19 Business Analyst Natera Bachelor of Science in Public Health, Master of Science in Sociology

Landon Molnar was interested in public health for most of his life. As he went through school, he always had aspirations of becoming a physician. “As I got older, I started to think that the way I conceptualized health and the things I wanted to do in that field were rooted in engaging with people and their behaviors – kind of like disseminating information,” he said. “While physicians certainly do that, it seemed to me that I could apply my skills around the scientific research and communication side of things.”

That led him to pursue his undergraduate degree in public health. When it came time to pursue his graduate degree, however, he chose sociology –and it wasn’t as big of a leap as one might assume.

“Public health and sociology are really closely entwined,” Molnar said. “I wanted to study the why and how of collective health behavior and health knowledge, and sociology was the right path for that.”

The COVID-19 pandemic hit as Molnar was finishing up his graduate degree, and it further synergized the two fields as one in his mind.

“COVID was a perfect example of how sociology can be used in the health space,” he said. “The science behind vaccines and mask-wearing was good, but the social context wound up being awful. And that was where we needed social science researchers.”

After graduation. Molnar was hired as an emergency response task force member for Metro Health. He served the city as an epidemiologist, using test results and aggregate data to track COVID cases, make cluster maps and more. “It taught me how to see data from a top-down approach,” he said.

His time at UTSA prepared him for this community-embedded work in San Antonio. “UTSA is made up of the community it serves, and that is extremely important to public health and sociology,” he said. “Without it, you have no context for understanding the machinations behind anything that produces the problems and solutions that constitute your job.”

Shortly after beginning a doctoral degree, Molnar realized he sought greater perspective over the commercial side of public health, and transitioned to his current position at Natera. Natera is a global leader in cell-free DNA testing, dedicated to oncology, women’s health and organ health. Molnar’s role at work is once again to aggregate data and conduct analytics, but in this case for billing and revenue cycle management.

“It seems like a huge switch, but it is still all very connected,” Molnar said. “A lot of the drivers of health in this country are related to insurance companies and cost of care, private decisions and profit motives. Understanding how people conceptualize their own care and what making these decisions feels like, from all sides, is valuable to me as a professional.”

Looking back on his time at UTSA and his career now, Molnar realized how valuable all of his experiences were to his professional and personal growth. “I struggled to find my footing for a few years at UTSA,” he admitted, “but San Antonio and UTSA gave me an opportunity to grow and flourish in a new environment with new types of support and challenges. By the time I finished my master’s degree, I was a very different person.”

Eric Ortiz '20

Clinical Dietitian - Lung Transplant University Health Master of Dietetic Studies

Eric Ortiz had always been curious about science and health, but didn’t see himself becoming a doctor. As he went through high school, and discovered the field of dietetics, he realized it was the perfect fit for him. It included a lot of science and pathophysiology, but also had a lot of interaction with people and a varying day-to-day.

Patricia Russell ’22

Health Science Specialist

VA Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research

Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC) for Suicide Prevention, Denver, Colorado Doctor of Psychology

Prior to arriving to complete her doctorate, Patricia Russell spent 20 years as an educator in public schools. While it was a bit daunting to come back to school, as a lifelong learner and someone who had clear research interests in mind, it was fulfilling a lifelong goal for Russell. Her primary research interest was military health, so she immediately connected with Chair and Professor Sandra Morissette. Morissette is widely recognized for her work in military and veteran health, and the two connected immediately.

“Knowing that I could contribute and give back to the veterans who served our country, and knowing that UTSA had the only program in Texas that offered this field, it was the perfect fit,” she said.

Eric Ortiz

He enrolled in UTSA’s highly competitive nutrition and dietetics program and had his horizons broadened even more. “The program really opened my eyes to the different paths of dietetics,” Ortiz said. “Every clinical rotation was different and there were so many different paths we could take.”

Today, Ortiz works as a transplant dietitian with the lung team at University Health. His duties also encompass treatment for transplant donors and recipients on the kidney and liver teams.

“It’s the best of both worlds for me,” Ortiz said. “I get to fulfill my growth but also my curiosities.”

Ortiz’s day-to-day involves conducting nutritional assessments for both pre- and post-transplant lung patients. The assessments range from brand new transplant patients to those who are years out after a transplant.

“The other day I had a patient that even after nine years post-transplant, still wanted to talk to a dietitian, just to make sure that they're doing everything they need to do,” Ortiz said.

In addition to conducting assessments for lung patients, Ortiz works with kidney and liver transplant patients as well.

Ortiz credits his time at UTSA for preparing him to be the dietitian he is today, and advises anyone interested in this aspect of healthcare to keep pushing through any doubts. “I used to be a student in the university, but now I’m a student in the field,” he said. “There’s always growth. You’re not alone in the program, and you won’t be alone afterwards. There’s always room to grow and learn.”

Russell’s dissertation at UTSA expanded the study of trauma using the trauma film paradigm, which uses a distressing film to see how people react to a potentially traumatic situation. Her work aimed to validate a virtual methodology of the trauma film paradigm, and she is the first to use a virtual format. Russell is currently writing the results up in a manuscript and has received an award for her findings from the American Psychological Association.

Russell’s primary job function at the Rocky Mountain VA Medical Center is to work with community organizations and health care centers who serve veterans but are not specifically tied to the VA. Her department trains these organizations to create or bolster their suicide prevention practices in order to better serve their veteran population.

“We train them on suicide prevention best practices and military cultural competence, and on things like how to talk to veterans,” Russell said. “How do you get them to open up? How do you build that rapport with them?”

In addition to community outreach and training, Russell is working with her primary investigator on piloting intensive case management with veterans who are at risk for suicide. “We look at social determinants of health,” Russell explained, “and try to intervene on homelessness, food insecurity or factors that make everything else more difficult. In addition to connecting them with mental health treatment, we try to intervene by addressing psychosocial needs.”

Her research and work at UTSA is directly applicable to her work – not only is she analyzing data and building programs around it, but Russell also facilitates a learning collaborative, meeting with organizations once monthly to help with their programming. Apart from her daily programming, Russell continues to assist with clinical trials and research on veteran health to work from the most up-to-date data in an everchanging field.

“The outcomes of this research inform what is done in the clinical setting,” Russell said. “It’s difficult, yet extremely rewarding work – every day when I come to work, I’m motivated to do my part in saving veterans’ lives.”

Morgan Zachmeyer ’22 Family Caregiver Specialist, Caregiver SOS Program Wellmed Charitable Foundation Master of Social Work

Morgan Zachmeyer had many plans for her future – and none of them included staying in her hometown of San Antonio. However, looking back on it, she is grateful things unfolded the way they did.

Zachmeyer was attending school in Baton Rouge, LA on a bowling scholarship with plans to graduate in 2020. She had a job lined up at DCFS, a contract signed, and a five-year plan at the ready – until COVID hit.

She returned home to finish her studies online, but because of travel restrictions and agency shutdowns, her plans for her career in LA were gone.

“I have such a supportive family and I knew I wanted to get my master’s at some point to be the social worker I really had imagined for myself,” Zachmeyer said. “So I applied with UTSA and it was one of the best decisions I ever could have made.”

“Every professor in the program brought something awesome to the table that I was really able to learn from,” Zachmeyer said. “The program was incredibly hard, but I loved that it challenged me. I was always guided in the right way.”

That challenge prepared her for her current job, she said – the business, the deadlines, the potential stress – while also giving her the practical skills she needed to succeed.

The Caregiver SOS Program at the Wellmed Charitable Foundation provides services at no cost for family members and friends providing care to an older loved one (60 years of age or older) with dementia or other chronic illnesses. As a Family Caregiver Specialist, Zachmeyer connects with caregivers and sets them up with education support groups, one on one coaching and more.

“We do a lot of evidence-based programs,” she said. “We’ll do a one-onone assessment and connect them with the programs that would work best for them. We also connect them with support groups to help navigate being a caregiver.” Zachmeyer administers all of those programs and services within four City of San Antonio senior centers.

While there may not be an obvious line from social work to public health, Zachmeyer maintains that she would not be able to do her job today without the foundations learned in the Master of Social Work program at UTSA. “This job is about 80% research,” she said, “and the program had us researching and learning critical thinking in every single project.”

“The Social Work program allowed us to learn how to implement processes and programming from national, to the community level, to the group, to the dyad and finally down to the individual,” Zachmeyer said, “and that is what I do every single day.”

– Amanda Cerreto