About Healing the Academy

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Healing the Academy emerged in 2019 as a visionary platform founded by Dr. Evelyn Vázquez to drive structural change in higher education. By prioritizing primary data collection and transformative approaches, Healing the Academy seeks to challenge systemic inequities and reimagine higher education, science, and medicine.

With a long-term goal to mitigate social injustice, health inequities, and psychological trauma, the platform centers its efforts on supporting communities resisting systems of oppression.

Dr. Vázquez, a proud native of Guerrero, Mexico, is the eldest daughter of a teenage single mother and was raised in a rural, low-income community. As the first in her family to attend college, she brings a deeply personal perspective to her work. Bilingual in Spanish and English, Dr. Vázquez focuses her research on critically examining the structural and social determinants that harm the health, emotional well-being, and quality of life of oppressed and marginalized populations.

As a community psychologist and health equity researcher, she specializes in qualitative and transformative methodologies, including action research and community-based participatory research, with a commitment to addressing systemic inequities and promoting social justice. 

As a woman of color from the Global South, her work is distinguished by its focus on engaging communities resisting systems of oppression, including racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ populations, low-income individuals, immigrants, people with disabilities, and first-generation college students. This engagement aims to dismantle systemic barriers, drive meaningful structural change, and foster liberation. 

Her scholarship is widely published in leading academic journals across disciplines, including the American Journal of Public Health, Journal of American College Health, Health Promotion Practice, Critical Public Health, BMC Public Health, Health Education & Behavior, International Journal for Academic Development, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action, Canadian Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Studies in International Education, and Community College Review.

In 2023, Dr. Vázquez received the prestigious Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Award from the Association of Recovery in Higher Education, as well as the UCR School of Medicine’s Research Achievement Award for Outstanding Population Health Research. She was also selected as a scholar in the NIH/NIDDK-funded UCLA LIFT-UP (Leveraging Institutional Support for Talent, Underrepresented Physicians, and/or Scientists) program, further solidifying her commitment to advancing health equity.

With over a decade of experience, Dr. Vázquez has championed the creation of inclusive environments that prioritize communities of care, mental health, and well-being as foundational to emancipatory societies.

Healing the Academy embodies Dr. Vázquez’s vision to foster equity, advance knowledge democracy, and amplify the voices of communities actively resisting systems of oppression in higher education, science, and medicine.