CPRC

Past Research: Professor Guilamo-Ramos’s past research has focused on the role of parents in the prevention of adolescent health risk behaviors, including alcohol, tobacco and sexual risk behavior. His research has primarily focused on Latino and African American youth and their families who reside in urban, resource-poor settings, such as the South Bronx, Harlem and Lower East Side communities of New York City. Within this program of research, Guilamo-Ramos has primarily focused on the role of parent-adolescent communication and the development of parent- and theory-based interventions for Latino youth and their families. Recently-published papers have examined: a) the role of parent-adolescent communication in the development of adolescent orientations toward sexual risk behavior, b) the application of a communication framework to the study of parent-adolescent communication about sex, and c) the role of acculturation in the development of adolescent health risk behaviors. Findings from these studies have been particularly important as they have demonstrated that: a) parents play an important role in preventing and reducing the likelihood of adolescent engagement in health risk behaviors, b) acculturation remains an important explanatory variable in understanding Latino health, with outcomes already evident by adolescence, c) the study of parent-adolescent communication about sex can greatly benefit from the use of theoretical frameworks, and d) orientations toward sexual risk behavior emerge in early adolescence. A strength of the above research is that it has been conducted with early adolescent Latino youth and their families, a vulnerable population that remains relatively understudied in the extant literature.

Present Research: Guilamo-Ramos’s current research continues to examine parental influences on adolescent risk behavior and focuses on cultural influences and the role of parent-adolescent communication and parental monitoring. Guilamo-Ramos was recently awarded funding from the National Institute of Mental Health to develop and evaluate a parent-based intervention for Latino adolescents in an urban healthcare clinic. The intervention uses a novel outreach approach in that it is coordinated through clinic-based social workers when physicians see adolescents for their annual physical examinations. His current research efforts also have expanded into the field of global public health, where he is conducting research with families in the Dominican Republic to identify empirical and sustainable parent-based approaches to reducing adolescent vulnerability to HIV-infection, STIs and unintended pregnancy.

Future Research: In his future work, Guilamo-Ramos will continue to examine family influences on adolescent risk behavior in both domestic and international settings, with a strong focus on HIV prevention. With respect to international work, he has submitted a grant to NIH and the Indian Council of Medical Research with social work faculty at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India. The proposed study will conduct formative research with rural Indian families to design and develop a family-based HIV prevention intervention to reduce vulnerability to HIV-infection among rural Indian youth ages 14-18 years. In addition, he has submitted an RO1 proposal to develop and test an innovative theoretical framework of parental monitoring to prevent Latino adolescents’ vulnerability to HIV infection. The research will elucidate how parental monitoring constructs change developmentally as Latino youth transition from middle school to high school, and it will relate parental monitoring constructs to increases in sexual activity across the middle and high school years.

Professor Guilamo-Ramos's Departmental Biography Page