Melissa Y. Delgado, Ph.D.

Melissa Y. Delgado, Ph.D., joined OHE as a 2024-2025 American Association for the Advancement of Science/Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Policy Fellow. Dr. Delgado is on a leave from her position as associate professor (tenured) in human development and family science (HDFS) at the University of Arizona (UA) to complete this fellowship. 

Dr. Delgado guides her academic career by three primary goals: study ways to reduce inequality among minoritized groups, focusing on promoting the health and well-being of Latinx youth; provide research opportunities to minoritized students at all levels (from high school to graduate school) to foster a more diverse and inclusive academic pipeline; and translate science for communities, such as through classes delivered to parents and to teachers of middle schoolers. 

Over the past two decades, Dr. Delgado has conducted longitudinal and cross-sectional studies examining parent-child relationships, stress processes, and adaptive cultural responses in minoritized children and families. Her research challenges traditional notions by demonstrating how sociocultural stressors affect both parents and children concurrently within the family unit. She employs mixed methods approaches, combining qualitative narratives with quantitative survey responses to provide a holistic understanding of youth-nuanced contextual processes. 

Dr. Delgado chairs the Latinx Families Research Initiative at the UA Frances McClelland Institute for Children, Youth, and Families, leading community engagement efforts. As chair of the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) publications committee, she played a key role in shaping diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility activities for the Journal of Research on Adolescence, SRA’s flagship journal. She has served as chair of the SRCD Latinx caucus and is a member of the SRCD ethnic and racial issues committee. Dr. Delgado also recently ended a 3-year term as the HDFS director of graduate studies, actively working to dismantle barriers for underrepresented individuals in academia and advocating for systemic change. 

Dr. Delgado earned her Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. in family and human development from Arizona State University (ASU), with a statistics doctoral collateral area; she also earned a B.A. in psychology from ASU and completed training as a W. T. Grant Foundation postdoctoral fellow.