Skip to main content

Part of UT Health San Antonio

School of Nursing, UT Health San AntonioSchool of Nursing, UT Health San Antonio

Part of UT Health San Antonio

Quicklinks

Current Faculty & Staff

  • Current Faculty
  • eTalus (Faculty profiles)
  • Faculty & Staff Handbook
  • Starfish
  • Syllabus Tool
  • SON SharePoint
  • TAMS (Teaching Assignments)

Current Students

  • Academic calendar
  • Bursar
  • Canvas
  • Catalog
  • Livemail
  • My Student Center
  • Schedules and syllabi
  • Student handbooks
  • Student Success Center
  • Typhon
  • Take a virtual tour for current students

Additional Resources

  • Our Library Liaison
  • Maps and directions
  • MyUTHealth
  • Tribute Magazine
  • Wellness 360

 Close Quicklinks

Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Programs
  • Clinical Experiences
  • Admissions
  • Outreach
  • Research
  • Student Success
  • Patient Care

Biobehavioral Research

We support biobehavioral research approaches to increase knowledge and improve health care outcomes.

yoga class

Biobehavioral Research Centers on Excellence Across the Lifespan

In the School of Nursing, our biobehavioral research focuses on health promotion and improving chronic disease management and prevention.

Biobehavioral Lab

Our Biobehavioral Lab is one of our centers of excellence focused on salivary science and biobanking. It serves as a one-stop shop for students and researchers for designing and conducting research studies involving biobehavioral methods.

The laboratory consists of a wet lab and a behavioral suite. The wet lab is classified as a Biosafety Level 2 facility by the UT Health San Antonio Environmental Health and Safety Department. It has the capacity to conduct assays involving saliva and blood. Several freezers are storing various biological samples from local and national studies.

The laboratory also has resources for various physical assessments including, but not limited to:

  • body composition (i.e., Physician scale, COSMED bod pod)
  • strength and fitness (i.e., Biodex system 3, Baseline hydraulic hand dynamometer, ParvoMedic Metabolic Card, Stop watch, and Polar heart rate monitor) and cardiovascular function (i.e., sphygmomanometer, oxymeter).

It also has resources for neuropsychological testing including, but not limited to the following:

  • Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
  • CANTAB (Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery)
  • D-KEFS (Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System).

The laboratory has an active collaboration with LabCorp to conduct assays that cannot be done in-house.

For additional information and collaboration inquiries, please contact Dr. Darpan Patel at pateld7@uthscsa.edu

 

Find 

  • Aging and Dementia
  • Health Disparities and Population Health
  • Maternal and Child
  • Cancer
feet jogging on treadmill

Exercise, diet, lifestyle and interactions do more for people than produce outwardly physical results. Our research is discovering deeper benefits to the physiology of the body and how we can improve health and wellness.

Darpan Patel, PhD
  • Saliva swab of woman

    MoTrPAC

    Grant: University of Texas Adult Clinical Center, NIH Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC).

    Goal: The purpose of the MoTrPAC is to catalyze the identification and mapping of molecular and cellular transducers underlying the physiological effects of physical activity—essentially seeking to understand the physical impact of exercise on health.

    Team: Patel lab

  • Filipino mom with child

    Patient-centered outcomes

    Grant: Mag-PCOR Muna Tayo: Building Capacity and Engagement among Filipino-American towards Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) and Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER).

    Goal: Build capacity and engage Filipino-Americans in PCOR and CER.

    Team: Bluhm Lab

  • mother and infant

    Maternal-infant interaction

    Grant: Maternal-Infant Interaction, Stress Reactivity, and Attunement (MIISA).

    Goal: Determine maternal and infant saliva biomarkers, heart rate variability data, and behavior during maternal-infant interactions that influence stress and attunement in infants.

    Team: Cleveland Lab

  • Senior Hispanic couple exercising outdoors

    Lifestyle interventions

    Grant: The Look AHEAD intervention for self-monitoring of behavioral lifestyle interventions (diet and activity) to prevent/delay frailty in community-dwelling older adults with type 2 diabetes.

    Goal: Study the impact of 10 face-to-face group behavioral educational sessions on frailty phenotype and inflammatory markers.

    Team: Jiwani Lab

Map image of UT Health San Antonio location

UT Health San Antonio
School of Nursing

7703 Floyd Curl Drive
San Antonio, TX 78229

Admissions & Student Services: 877-235-0341

Development & Alumni Relations: 210-567-5534

Connect with us

  • Careers
  • Contact us
  • Give a donation
  • Maps & directions
  • Offices
  •  
We make lives better ®

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, also called UT Health San Antonio, is a leading academic health center with a mission to make lives better through excellence in advanced academics, life-saving research and comprehensive clinical care including health, dental and cancer services.

Web Privacy | Links from websites affiliated with UT Health's website (uthscsa.edu) to other websites do not constitute or imply university endorsement of those sites, their content, or products and services associated with those sites. The content on this website is intended to be used for informational purposes only. Health information on this site is not meant to be used to diagnose or treat conditions. Consult a health care provider if you are in need of treatment.