Biography
Melinda Villagran is a professor and Executive Director of the Translational Health Research Center at Texas State University. She leads academic, public, and corporate research partnerships that seek new solutions to improve resilience and health outcomes. Dr. Villagran is currently the Principal Investigator for the Mental Health M.A.P. (Monitoring and Assessment Program) research program and the Visualizing Mental Health research program, both of which are funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to improve mental healthcare access and quality in Central Texas. She is also the PI for a research program funded by the McCoy Foundation to explore the role of relational values in workplace. In 2024, Dr. Villagran was appointed by Gov. Abbott to take part in a Texas Healthcare Workforce Task Force that created policy recommendations to address issues related to healthcare workforce shortages across the state. She formerly served as Co-PI of the Accelerating Credentials of Value research program, which was funded by the Texas Higher Education Board to develop evidence-based skill development opportunities for the healthcare workforce. During her academic career, Dr. Villagran has served as a professor, department chair, graduate program director, research center director, chair of the Council on Funded Research, and as a PI and Co-PI on numerous research grants from state and federal agencies, and private foundations. She is the recipient of the Texas State Presidential Award for Scholarly and Creative Activity at the professor level, and is the author of two scholarly books and over 65 peer-reviewed research publications.
Research Interests
health communication; healthcare management, quality, and workforce development; interdisciplinary teams; community health interventions; research mentoring; student success
Teaching Interests
health communication campaigns and interventions; organizational communication, data analysis and visualization methods, empirical research and statistics, training and development; population and community health disparities; team science