Magdalena Avila, Ph.D., is currently an Associate Professor in Health Education, the Department of Health, Exercise and Sports Science at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Avila received her academic training and degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. She has always worked with communities of color in developing sustainable strategies for effective and long-term interventions. Dr. Avila?s expertise is in Community Health and Community Based Participatory Research, as an orientation for working and partnering with Latino and other Indigenous communities of color. She brings extensive expertise in environmental social justice research, she was an active research partner in the South Valley Partners for Environmental Justice, a collaborative research grant funded by NIEHS for ten years to study environmental health problems impacting a predominantly Latino community. She is also a recognized expert working with Health Impact Assessments (HIA's) and urban /rural communities in addressing community health. Dr. Avila works directly with communities to partner in ways to increase the understanding of HIA's and their effectiveness as a tool to better understand and respond to potential policy impacts. Dr. Avila currently sits on the Bernalillo County Place Matters-Comprehensive Area Plan HIA Advisory Council; the New Mexico Voices for Children Food Tax HIA Advisory Council, she is also working with several Pueblo based HIA projects to address how HIA's can also be used in Pueblo/Tribal based settings.