Frometa selected to lead public health team to Puerto Rico in March

Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) Assistant Professor Cecilia Frometa, PhD was recently selected to lead a public health team as part of a collaborative effort between the YCSC and Yale Alumni Service Corps (YASC). Through a service trip this March, the team will develop a school-based socio-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum for implementation in Puerto Rico.

“The goal of the public health team is to create a curriculum that schools can utilize on an ongoing basis. We want to leave schools with ideas and actionable steps on ways of thinking about socio-emotional learning. We encourage schools to continue to implement our week-long activities with a particular emphasis on utilizing a trauma and culturally informed lens,” explains Frometa, who will travel to Puerto Rico this Spring with YCSC Postdoctoral Associate Melissa Lucas, PhD.

Lucas, who serves as a fellow at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, is the first recipient of a YASC travel scholarship for a YCSC trainee. Her research is focused on supporting the socioemotional health of children and educators, with an emphasis on nurturing healthier and more equitable classroom and school environments, particularly in marginalized communities. “Dr. Lucas will assist the public health team by providing educational support around the promotion of emotional well-being and development of culturally and linguistically minoritized children and families,” Frometa adds.

A long-standing Yale faculty member and clinical psychologist with expertise in child development, Frometa will work closely with a group co-leader, Yale alum Rosalia Burke, MD (Yale College Class of 1992). With a team of 12 volunteers, they will travel to the community of Cantera, an under-served and densely populated neighborhood in San Juan that was heavily damaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and an earthquake in 2020.

YASC teams consisting of 40 volunteers in total – mainly Yale alumni and students from across the U.S. – will visit the Escuela Manuel Elzaburu y Vizcarrondo, a pre-K through sixth grade public elementary school with 261 students located in the heart of Cantera.

The March service trip is being planned in collaboration with Instituto Nueva Escuela (INE), which is dedicated to improving Puerto Rican students’ academic and socio-emotional outcomes through the implementation of Montessori education in the public-school setting. INE currently operates in 53 schools.

In addition to developing a socio-emotional curriculum, Frometa will provide instructional preparatory support to the YASC multidisciplinary public health team on the impact of trauma on learning and emotional regulation, normative development, and culturally informed family systems considerations. Frometa’s vision is “to emphasize the importance of engaging parents to be able to use some of the tools that the schools are implementing within the home setting.”

“It is important to think about this initiative from a systemic perspective. To stress academic and socio-emotional well-being most appropriately, we need to look at systems as a whole, inclusive of considering the impact of community violence, family systems dynamics, natural disasters and poverty,” comments Frometa, who further states that “incorporating ways of supporting front line staff including teachers, parents, administrators and health and mental health professionals, a community partners is pivotal if we are to see sustainable changes.”

During the 2021-22 school year, Frometa provided virtual support to schools in Puerto Rico through bi-monthly psycho-educational groups for teachers and other professionals, with the goal of enhancing schools’ ability to expanding their socio-emotional curriculum. “Meetings with school leadership have also been pivotal to ongoing engagement and long-term collaborations with INE,” says Frometa, who also states that she is “grateful for the many individuals and groups within and outside of Yale that contributed books and materials on prevention and health promotion to the schools.”

Specifically, Frometa named Tanya Colón and Sharon Kugler, in addition to the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence; Yale School of Medicine’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Yale Latino Networking Group; Yale Divinity School; the Connecticut Clearing House at Wheeler Clinic; and countless others who contributed their time and effort this this initiative.

The YASC travels globally to raise health and mental health awareness by providing organizational and program level infrastructure support across multiple sectors serving children and families in under-resourced and disenfranchised communities. Past service trips have included travel to South Africa, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Ghana, India, and Fort Mojave Indian Tribe in Nevada.

To learn about how to become involved in this work, please contact Cecilia Frometa.