Flavio Marsiglia, who joined ASU’s School of Social Work in 1994 as an assistant professor, has been named Foundation Professor of Cultural Diversity and Health, one of the university’s highest accolades.

In addition to carrying the rank of full professor and providing additional discretionary re-search support, this named professorship recognizes the international excellence of Marsiglia’s scholarship and interdisciplinary leadership in the fields of drug abuse and HIV prevention, with an emphasis on Latino populations and social work intragroup relations.

“Dr. Marsiglia epitomizes the model of leader-ship and scholarly excellence that is moving our College of Public Programs forward at an exciting pace,” says Dean Jeff Chapman.

Marsiglia is the director of ASU’s Southwest Interdisciplinary Re-search Consortium, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Drug Abuse and is one of just seven such centers in the nation. He has published more than 30 articles on drug abuse prevention and is the principal author of the forthcoming book, “Culturally Grounded Social Work.

”He led the team that developed “keepin’ it REAL” (Refuse, Ex-middle-school students, which received the Excellence Award and was named a national Model Program by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). As one of just 41 model programs of its kind in the nation, the program has been replicated among more than 14,000 students, and is being adopted in schools and community organizations across the nation and internationally, including Arizona, Texas and Nuevo Leon, Mexico. This narrative and performance-based program uses videos depicting life stories of Arizona’s youth to teach how to lead drug-free lives.

The consortium that Marsiglia directs brings together ASU faculty from eight disciplines with community partners that include school districts, social service agencies, and hospitals. Their collaborative studies have ranged from research projects on resiliency and risk processes for urban American Indian youth, substance abuse prevention in Arizona mining towns, treatment and prevention of co-occurring disorders among Latinas, medication adherence for schizophrenics, family drug courts, and family acculturation studies to examine health outcomes of Latino populations. Marsiglia also spearheads the consortium’s international initiatives in Mexico and Spain, among other countries.

Palka, with the College of Public Programs, can be reached at (480) 727-6238 or (debra.palka@asu.edu).