The Doctoral Respecialization Program at AIU

By Paul Thomas, Winter 2009

The doctoral respecialization program at Alliant is unique in that it helps to retrain professionals who already hold doctorates within the field of psychology. These returning students have an incredible wealth of experience and they serve as excellent role models for students new to graduate school. Rafael Diaz, Ph.D, is a perfect example of such a role model and considering his credentials as a prominent professor, researcher, and author I wanted to share some of his accomplishments with the Alliant community.

Rafael began his professional career as a clinical social worker in New York City. Primarily interested in working with children, he later earned a PhD in developmental psychology from Yale University where he focused on the cognitive and language development of bilingual children. After graduating from Yale, Rafael became a professor at the University of New Mexico, and then at Stanford University during the early 1990s.

While a professor at Stanford, Rafael lived in San Francisco during the AIDS epidemic and personally experienced the devastation of the illness, as he lost many friends. Serving as a faculty member at a prestigious university, Rafael felt disconnected from his community, and in an effort to combat the disease he entered a post-doc in epidemiology at the Center for AIDS Prevention at UCSF. Upon his completion of the program Rafael resigned from Stanford and became a professor at UCSF, where he began his career in AIDS related research.

Rafael’s research focused on the impact that homophobia, discrimination, poverty, and forced migration had on the health of Latino males. As a Latino male who had immigrated to the United States from Cuba, he felt deeply connected and committed to this population. He was also interested in understanding why Latino males, and other men of color, were at a far greater risk for contracting HIV, than Caucasian males.

Rafael thrived as a community based researcher and acquired prestigious awards and honors for the work that he has conducted. He has also written numerous books, such as, Latino Gay Men and HIV, which has served as a guiding tool in developing HIV prevention programs for men of color.

In the late 1990s, Rafael was contacted by the SFSU to create a program that would connect academic scholars and researchers directly to the population that they were studying. In 2001 The César E. Chávez Institute opened in the Mission District. The institute is a community-based center committed to promoting social justice action-oriented guidance for disenfranchised members of the community.

Having been interested in clinical work throughout his career, Rafael has decided to return to school to train as a clinician. He is particularly interested in the emotional and social issues related to HIV.

As a person and a professional, Rafael has been able to closely connect with the Latino community and he has derived great pleasure from his work as a researcher and an advocate. “The most satisfying aspect of my career has been the opportunity to study, as a scientist, relevant issues that are meaningful,” he said. Rafael attributes his success to bringing the different aspects of his life to his research.