Texas State University sociology professor Joseph A. Kotarba, Ph.D., has been awarded a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, administered by its state affiliate Humanities Texas.
The grant will support a collaborative research project titled “The Frontier( s) of Health: The Rural West Texas Study.” The study is a partnership between the Department of Sociology at TXST and the Department of Nursing at Sul Ross State University.
The project focuses on how residents and visitors in the Big Bend region make practical decisions about managing health, illness and injury. As part of the study, 19 senior nursing students from Sul Ross State will conduct a series of interviews to better understand how individuals navigate healthcare challenges in a rural and geographically remote environment.
Funding from Humanities Texas will also support the presentation of research findings and analysis to community members in Alpine and Marfa.
Kotarba’s collaborators on the project include Minerva Gonzales, DNP, chairperson of the Department of Nursing at Sul Ross, and Veronica Arredondo, DNP, assistant professor of nursing at Sul Ross.
Kotarba is a medical sociologist whose work examines how individuals and practitioners respond to uncertainty in health and healing. His research in the Big Bend region is part of a broader, ongoing study exploring how people manage situations where illness, treatment options and outcomes are unknown or evolving.
This larger body of research spans a range of settings, including NASA space medicine, professional sports medicine, emergency care at large public events, the medical and political challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, battlefield medicine, rodeo injury care, and aging. Across these contexts, Kotarba’s work highlights how patients and practitioners navigate barriers such as geographic distance, cultural differences, and technological limitations in addressing health concerns.
Joseph Kotarba
