Elizabeth Muñoz

Since 2019, Elizabeth Muñoz has served on the faculty of the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences and as a research associate in the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Since 2020, she has been a faculty affiliate of the Center on Aging and Population Sciences. Previously, she served as a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside.

Racial and ethnic minoritized adults suffer a greater incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias compared to their counterparts, a central focus of the Muñoz research program is to expand our understanding on how psychosocial and environmental contexts across the lifespan influence cognitive health in racial/ethnic minoritized adults with the goal of identifying early and modifiable predictors of adult cognitive health to address inequities in old age. Her three active lines of research investigation include: 1) the links and mechanisms between psychological, social, and environmental stress on cognitive functioning across the lifespan; 2) examinations of salient sources of stress and their links with cognitive function among Latinx adults; 3) applying a within population lens to evaluate associations between social and ethnicity-related sources of stress on cognitive function in Mexican-origin adults. Muñoz employs a variety of research designs to address key research questions, including longitudinal studies across years of assessments, ecological momentary assessments, and an integration of both (e.g., measurement-burst designs).