Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez

Biography

My work addresses health parity through scholarship, teaching/training, and mentorship. My scholarship on cultural adaptations of evidence-based interventions addresses health disparities in access, acceptability, and effectiveness of treatment for ethnic and culturally diverse people. The work on cultural adaptations spans the gamut from specific trials (Amador Buenabad et al., 2019; Domenech et al., 2011; Parra-Cardona et al., 2017) to advances in theory development (Bernal & Domenech Rodríguez, 2012; Kofsloski & Domenech Rodríguez, 2017) to meta-analytic examination of impacts of cultural adaptations on treatment effectiveness (Smith et al., 2011; Soto et al., 2018). The impact is evident in citations (see Google Scholar) and grant funding. My courses in multiculturalism and diversity prepare psychologists entering the workforce from the undergraduate or graduate level to attend to diversity and equity in their professional pursuits. My approach to teaching/training is systematic and evidence-based whether at the undergraduate level in psychology (Patterson et al., 2018; Alvarez & Domenech Rodríguez, 2020; Hicks et al., 2024) or at the graduate level in physician assistant studies (Domenech Rodríguez et al., 2019; Phelps et al., 2021). As of 2026, I have chaired 29 dissertations to completion. Most of these have added specifically to health disparities scholarship, have been authored by ethnic and culturally diverse graduate students, many of whom were bilingual. Finally, I have advanced an agenda to reduce health disparities through leadership activities in human research protections (Domenech Rodríguez et al., 2017), leadership in the National Latinx Psychological Association (Miville et al., 2017) and Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology (Domenech Rodríguez, 2018, 2019).