Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor in Preventive Medicine and Sociology at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. She oversees the research activities of the Patient Education and Community Outreach Center of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center; and is the Director of Community Outreach and Education at the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research at USC. Her work focuses on the role of culture in health risk behavior with an emphasis on eliminating health inequities among Hispanic/Latinos and other vulnerable populations. She has applied her research to a variety of areas in cancer control, including tobacco use prevention, obesity prevention and cervical cancer. She has received multiple prestigious awards, including a Distinguished Career Award from the American Public Health Association-Latino Caucus and next month will be receiving the Chancellor's Commendation Award for Community Based Participatory Research at the University of California Irvine.