Arturo Durazo, PhD

Arthur (Arturo) Durazo is a health psychologist with an emphasis on behavioral medicine, eHealth/mHealth interventions, and health equity. His research focuses on psychosocial factors that promote protective behaviors among those with disproportionate burdens of illness associated with membership in low socioeconomic and ethnic minority groups. His research, guided by self-regulation theory, examines how illness and risk beliefs, particularly those relating to fatalistic control beliefs, influence emotional reactions such as illness worry and, in turn, promote protective health behaviors (e.g., cancer screening, healthcare seeking, quit smoking). These findings are used to guide the development of health interventions to promote adaptive health decision making.

As a postdoctoral fellow at the UCSF CTCRE, Arturo Durazo plans to involve vulnerable populations and clinical groups, particularly cancer patients/survivors, to examine the relationship between their views on cancer, affect in response to disease, and tobacco use and cessation. These findings are to inform health communication interventions promoting smoking cessation in cancer patients and survivors.