Peter Guarnaccia

Peter Guarnaccia (Ph. D., Connecticut, 1984) is an Emeritus Professor at Rutgers University. His research interests include cross-cultural patterns of psychiatric disorders, cultural competence in mental health organizations, and processes of cultural and health change among Latino immigrants. He has examined mental health among Latino individuals in the U.S. and in Puerto Rico for two decades, most recently using the National Latino and Asian American (NLAAS) mental health study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Publications from the NLAAS include “Assessing Diversity among Latinos: Results from the NLAAS” published in the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences (30:357-378, 2007) and “Ataque de Nervios as a Marker of Social and Psychiatric Vulnerability: Results from the NLASS” published in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry(56:289-309,2010). He was Associate Editor of Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry from 2000-2004 and Co-Editor-in-Chief from 2004-2007. He is co-editor, with Keith Wailoo and Julie Livingston, of A Death Retold: Jessica Santillan, the Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship, published by the University of North Carolina Press (2006). He has been shifting his research to Mexico, reflected in a recent publication in Ethnic and Racial Studies in 2011 entitled “ ‘We eat meat everyday’: Ecology and economy of dietary change among Oaxacan migrants from Mexico to New Jersey.” He currently directs one of the International Service Learning Programs on Community Health in Oaxaca, Mexico.  He worked on a study of immigrant students at Rutgers entitled “What Makes Acculturation Successful?” that was funded by NICHD. He also engaged in a new community health initiative linking researchers from Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences and other Rutgers programs with New Brunswick community health organizations.