A familiar name appeared in the program at this month’s commencement: Yuliana Soto, former trainee at the Family Resiliency Center (FRC), was graduating as a Doctor of Philosophy in kinesiology and community health.
Currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Chicago, Soto’s research strives to promote brain health and health equity across the lifespan, specifically among underserved populations. She advances this work through a number of projects—some new, some a continuation of her graduate studies. But whether old or new, Soto’s approaches are influenced by her time in Doris Kelley Christopher Hall.
“I really appreciate my time at the FRC,” said Soto. “I feel like I learned a whole bunch of techniques that I'm utilizing now and I'm constantly thinking of how to incorporate them in my projects.”
In a new study, Soto plans to combine neuroimaging with survey methodologies to disentangle self-regulation from self-compassion—that is, cognition from emotion—which she notes are often collapsed together. She will begin by examining activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with self-regulation, and then approach the study of self-compassion through a questionnaire. This design is akin to the multiple method approach that is a hallmark of many FRC projects.
Soto’s work is also influenced by her time spent with two FRC projects: one that implements a mindful movement program in local preschools, and one that builds the evaluation capacities of agencies and service providers funded by the Champaign County Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Boards. In both instances, she walked away with tangible skills.
“Can children between three and five-years-old actually practice mindfulness? I had a hard time imagining that type of programming until I worked on it. I really learned those techniques,” she said.
With the second project, too, Soto gained a real sense of community implementation and plans to create short video trainings on yoga poses akin to the microlearning videos on evaluation developed for the local agencies and service providers.
“Specifically with the empowerment study for board-funded agencies, I learned how to perform qualitative research on a larger scale,” she said. “We gathered data from a lot of people at the same time and in the same place, which allowed us to be in the community, assessing what they need. That’s a technique that I had read about but never actually practiced. But now I can see the real-world applicability of it, especially when you combine this with a tangible product that the community can utilize and that doesn’t just get shelved at the end of the day.”
This robust understanding of research dissemination also informs how Soto intends to continue the work of her dissertation. For her survey, she developed a workbook that is culturally tailored for Latina youth to promote physical activity and mental health through a yoga and mindfulness program. In addition to microlearning videos, she plans to engage community youth in co-designing an app and website. This is an extension of participatory methods she learned during her graduate training.
Ultimately, Soto hopes to translate research quickly and effectively.
“I love research, I love teaching, and I will never shut the door to an entrepreneurial route,” she said, “If there is a faster way to implement programs in the community, then I will take it. But right now, I am still community coalition building to support and grow future research.”