DENVER – Guatemalan psychologist Evelinn Borrayo, executive director of the Latino Research and Policy Center and an expert on inequalities of access to health care, is out to reduce the disadvantage minorities suffer in that area.

She assumed her post this month in the LRPC, an organization of the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Denver.

Borrayo, who calls herself “a bilingual, bicultural Latino,” left her native country for the United States 25 years ago to get a college education.

In 1999 she earned a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of North Texas and that same year began to teach at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Since 2005 she has been a professor at UCD.

Throughout her studies and teaching career, Borrayo has focused on the inequality of access to health care that affects low-income Latinos suffering from cancer.

She chose this subject, she said, upon learning that though Latino women have a lower incidence of breast cancer than whites, their mortality rate is disproportionately higher because when they get cancer it is generally detected at a more advanced stage.

For that reason, Borrayo has researched the social, psychological and cultural factors that help or hinder Latino females in getting an early detection of cancer and in taking preventive measures.

From her new post, Borrayo will have access to researchers and experts at the UCD and the Anschutz Medical Campus in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

Her goal, she said, is to involve not only those experts but also professors and students in health projects and services accessible to the Latino community.

“As the new director of the LRPC, I want to focus mainly on two areas: eliminating health inequalities, not only with regard to cancer but also diabetes and cardiovascuolar diseases that affect the Latino community, and at the same time increase the number of Latinos studying courses related to health,” Borrayo said.

According to UCD statistics, in 2008 in Colorado there were 15,408 doctors without counting those working for the government. Of those doctors, only 208, or 1.5 percent of the total, were Latinos, while Hispanics represent 20 percent of the state’s population.

At the same time, Borrayo said, that collaboration among academics and community leaders should be of “practical benefit” for the community. In doing this work, community organizations should be “partners at the same level” as the university researchers.

Borrayo sees herself as a “privileged Latino woman because she has a solid education and a fulfilling career,” and said that her passion is “to promote a better life for all members of the community, especially Latinos.” EFE