Class of 2025: Dani Montoya embraces public health and perseverance

By Amelia Heymann

Growing up in Oxnard, California, Dani Montoya saw the social inequalities affecting her largely Mexican American community. She initially felt that becoming a doctor would be an ideal way to help others, but she ended up favoring data over diagnosis.

"A lot of my people, good people in my life, recommended that I go into public health," she said.

Montoya took the guidance to heart and graduates this month with her Ph.D. in health care policy and research from Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Public Health. She was drawn to VCU by both its financial support and the program's focus on community-based participatory research, with professors and students committed to serving a greater good in policy and practice.

"It is really an outstanding program, especially for individuals who want to feel well-rounded in being a public health professional," Montoya said.

Her lab projects included participating in health-related research of Black women of reproductive age, as well as working with Virginia's Department of Medical Assistance Services to assess Medicaid programs that serve women with substance use disorders. And her personal research focused on the Hispanic community's predisposition to type 2 diabetes, including the impact of place, culture and care.

"Quality of care is great on its own, but I also wanted to look at things like segregation. How does that affect these really big ideas?" Montoya said. "And I think that's something that I think a policy person is really able to do."

She noted that Hispanics and Latinos are often treated as a single homogenous group, when in fact there are many communities with unique characteristics.

"That is really kind of understudied," she said, emphasizing the need for more granular data to understand disparities. "We don't do a lot of research on race among Hispanics, and that's a hard topic … specifically because we have a hard time labeling Hispanics."

Montoya also has explored acculturation, which is assimilation into a different culture. Immigrants' health can be affected by adjustment to the American diet, segregation, the doctors they see and the general stresses of establishing lives in a new country. She worked on several papers that examined such elements and potential links to diabetes, finding that income level, education and insurance status were notable factors.

"I didn't find any differences when it came to race between Hispanics, but it's important that I did it," she said. "If we don't look at these differences, we won't know and we won't be able to describe any disparities that we see."

Montoya also examined how Hispanic and Black diabetes patients had more thorough screenings from Hispanic and Black doctors.

"There's a lot of history of medical racism, of minorities having difficult times interacting with our health system," she said. "Having a racially or ethnically concordant provider could be a way for the health system to increase trust for communities that have a hard time trusting the medical system."

Montoya's Ph.D. has special resonance because undiagnosed ADHD was part of her framework in life. In addition to moments of self-doubt, she had instructors over time who told her "maybe science isn't for you."

"But I felt like I just needed to persevere," Montoya said. "My whole education journey is mostly a story of just persevering grit."

Peter Cunningham, Ph.D., professor and interim chair of the Department of Health Policy, applauds such resolve. He served as Montoya's academic advisor and dissertation chair, and while she had to adjust to the Ph.D. program, her dissertation and oral defense were among the strongest he has ever seen.

"She really is a role model for students who may at times seriously doubt their ability to complete their degree programs," Cunningham said. "She taught me that even just a little encouragement and show of confidence can go a long way in helping students to overcome their early struggles. Not only can they complete the degree, but they can finish strong, as Dani did."