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PhD, Research & Theory Development, NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing
MS, Advanced Practice Nursing: Family Nurse Practitioner, NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing
BS, Nursing, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
BS, Chemistry, University of Texas Pan American

David Ray Garcia is a provost’s postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing. Dr. Garcia is originally from McAllen, Texas, a city on the Southern US-Mexico border that is predominantly Latino, medically underserved, and increasingly burdened by the HIV epidemic. His interdisciplinary research focuses on the syndemic relationships between substance use, violence, mental health, and HIV risk behaviors among adolescent gay and bisexual men, and the protective factors that mitigate HIV risk.

Among his many honors, Dr. Garcia received the Outstanding Dissertation Award (2022) for his PhD dissertation entitled Syndemic Predictors of HIV Risk Behaviors Among Adolescent Gay and Bisexual Men: A Secondary Data Analysis of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey Years 2015-2019. The integrative review conducted for his dissertation has been published in the journal Nursing Research.

As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Garcia works as a research assistant on the NIH-funded clinical trial Adherence Connection for Counseling, Education, and Support (ACCESS) II (PI: Navarra), which examines the contextual factors of the peer participant relationship among young people of color living with HIV.

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