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Program Book

Desiree A. Diaz, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC, CNE,CHSE-A, ANEF, FSSH, FAAN (she/her/hers)

Director of the Hispanic Serving Healthcare Professionals Certificate Program, Undergraduate Simulation Coordinator, and Professor - University of Central Florida College of Nursing
Immediate Past President, INACSL
Orlando, Florida

One of the world’s leading healthcare simulation education experts, Professor Desiree A. Díaz has spent more than a decade seeking to improve healthcare disparities through simulation education. She believes it is important not just to teach skills and responses, but also to explore the thoughts behind those actions. Dr.Diaz is the Endowed Enfermería Faculty Scholar, Undergraduate Simulation Coordinator and a Professor at the University of Central Florida. Her research focuses on combining cutting-edge simulation technology with the human emotion of empathy to foster more culturally competent providers and ultimately improve care for underserved patient populations, including the incarcerated, English language learners and the LGBTQ+ community. Currently, she creates tests and disseminates research on cutting-edge technologies such as holograms within the simulation community. Her strategies within simulation research pedagogy over the last decade have promoted health equity and brought awareness to healthcare disparities. She was a National Coalition Ethnic Minority Nurse Scholar and Health Leadership Fellow. She serves as Immediate Past President of the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation. Díaz is also committed to global health, and has helped lead several UCF interprofessional medical outreach trips to South America, Africa and the Caribbean.

Her current grant funding focuses on educating and exploring ways to eliminate healthcare disparities while educating the workforce. As co-PI to a 2.7 million dollar HRSA grant “ENFERMERIA” which looks to empower and enhance linguistic services and culturally congruent care within the Hispanic community while encouraging advancement to graduate degrees of diverse post-baccalaureate student populations and as PI on approximately $500k grant that utilizes simulation to examine healthcare disparities and the role of public health nursing, Dr.Diaz engages multiple means to reduce healthcare inequity and encourage healthcare equity advocates.

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