Cyleste Cassandra Collins

Biography

"Dr. Collins earned her M.S.W. and Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Alabama in 2005. She holds an M.A. in psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara (1999), and a B.A. in psychology from the University of California Riverside (1995). Her practice experience has been primarily in the areas of violence against women, institutional children's services, social service administration, and HIV/AIDS services and prevention. Dr. Collins' teaching interests are in social work research and evaluation, social policy, program planning, management and administration in human service organizations, diversity and discrimination, and family violence. Research and Scholarship Dr. Collins has been involved in research in a number of areas, including substance abuse, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, perceptions of discrimination, rural health disparities, and the experiences of urban children and adolescents living in housing projects. Dr. Collins' dissertation used theory and methods from cognitive anthropology to examine human service professionals' cultural models of domestic violence."

Research Interest

Research Methods, Social Policy, Theories of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, Health Disparities, Political Economy of Health, Evidence-Based Practice, Evaluation of Clinical Practice, health disparities, poverty and health inequities, interpersonal violence, domestic violence, family violence, cultural models, cultural consensus model, refugee health, family homelessness, housing stability, housing first, community-based participatory research, community engaged research, academic/community partnerships.