May marks Mental Health Awareness Month, a powerful reminder that mental well-being and healing matters for everyone—including the Latino and Spanish speaking community. While conversations around mental health are growing, many Latino people still face barriers to support due to stigma, lack of culturally responsive care, language gaps, and limited access to resources.
As a nonprofit mental health agency, it is crucial to raise awareness and funds for mental health resources and increase access to mental health services that reflect our community’s culture, values, and needs, especially during a period of intensity in which many in our community need mental health services more than ever.
Many supporters have reached out to El Futuro to ask, how can we help? Here’s how:
This month, we invite you to become a Mental Health Ambassador—a leader and advocate in your community who helps break the silence, shares resources, and encourages others to seek support without shame. You don’t need to be a professional—just someone who cares, listens, and wants to make a difference.
Why is access to bilingual and culturally attentive mental health care important?
Mental health services that understand and respect cultural values, family dynamics, and experiences like immigration or generational trauma are far more effective. Without this cultural connection, people are less likely to trust the system or seek help. With your support, we can reduce wait times for therapy and psychiatry, expand clinical programs such as El Faro, El Futuro’s team that helps bridge gaps between parents and schools as they support children with ADHD, increase the number of substance use evaluations and recovery support, and build stronger, healthier future for Latino families in our community.
Join us this May Mental Health Month as a Mental Health Ambassador and commit to one of the big 3: Donate, Fundraise, or Promote by sharing El Futuro’s campaign emails throughout the month of May with your friends, families, neighbors, colleagues, employers, places of worship, and beyond.
To learn more or join as a Mental Health Ambassador, please reach out to Lizbeth Turrubiartes: LTurrubiartes@elfuturo-nc.org
Alvely Alcántara, LCSW
Rossy C. Garcia, MEd 
Katy Sims, MD 
Everardo Aviles, LCSW, LCAS (Eve)
As a medical anthropologist and social work researcher, Dr. Gulbas’ research embodies interdisciplinarity through the integration of applied theories of health and human development with qualitative and ethnographic methodologies. Her work seeks to understand how people—children, families, and providers—navigate complex sociocultural landscapes in the pursuit of mental health. Most of her work, to date, focuses attention on developing more robust interpretations of suicide risk. With funding from the National Institutes of Mental Health, this body of research has contributed to advancements in theoretical and empirical knowledge of the broader contexts within which youth suicide risk is situated. 
R. Gabriela Barajas-Gonzalez is a developmental psychologist and an assistant professor of Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Dr. Barajas-Gonzalez is the principal investigator of a study that examines the impact of immigration-related threat and stress on school communities. She earned a PhD in developmental psychology from Columbia University and hold a BA in human biology from Stanford University. Dr. Barajas-Gonzalez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and a first gen college student.
Dr. Parra-Cardona is an Associate Professor in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work (SHSSW) at the University of Texas at Austin. At the SHSSW, he serves as Coordinator for Mexico and Latin American initiatives. He also serves as Area Director for Research at the UT Austin Latino Research Institute. Dr. Parra-Cardona’s program of research is focused on the cultural adaptation of evidence-based parenting interventions for low-income Latinx populations in the US and Latin America.
Bianka Reese, PhD, MSPH is a research scientist and program evaluator specializing in adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health. Her previous research in the experiences of Latinx LGBTQ+ youth stems from her work as the Research and Evaluation Manager at SHIFT NC (Sexual Initiatives For Teens), where she led largescale evaluations of multilevel, community-based sexual health promotion initiatives and research projects aimed at elevating the voices of diverse youth in North Carolina. Dr. Reese is currently the Senior Research Strategist at Creative Research Solutions, LLC, an award-winning national evaluation, research, and assessment firm.
Tania Connaughton-Espino, MPH is an independent researcher focused on adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health. Her interest in the experiences of Latinx LGBTQ+ youth stems from her previous work with SHIFT NC (Sexual Initiatives For Teens), where she led the training and evaluation department, conducted capacity-building workshops for youth serving professionals including on the topic of how to be more affirming of LGBTQ youth, and from her extensive experience working with the Latinx population in NC.
Maru Gonzalez, EdD is an Assistant Professor and Youth Development Specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Human Sciences at North Carolina State University. Her areas of inquiry include youth development with a focus on activism, social justice, and the experiences of LGBTQ+ young people across familial, school, and community contexts. 
Nayeli Y. Chavez-Dueñas, PhD
Hector Y. Adames, PsyD