Rosario Medina PhD, FNP-BC, ACNP, CNS, FAANP

Rosario Medina is a native New Yorker, but spent 26 years in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida before transferring to Denver. She completed her bachelor of nursing at Pace University Lienhard School of Nursing at Pleasantville, New York. In 1990, Rosario graduated from the College of New Rochelle, N.Y. as a Clinical Nurse Specialist with a minor in education. She has two post-graduate degrees: a family nurse practitioner degree from Florida Atlantic University and an acute care nurse practitioner degree from Barry University. She achieved her PhD in nursing at Barry University in Florida in 2007.

Medina's nursing career spans over thirty-fiver years of hospital and clinical practice in New York City, Southeast Florida and recently Denver Colorado. She has practiced in various major medical and teaching facilities as a staff nurse, charge nurse and nurse manager in New York. She has also practiced as a Clinical Nurse Specialist at Memorial Medical Center and at multiple clinics as a nurse practitioner in Broward and Palm Beach County, Florida. She entered the academic setting in 1993 while maintaining practice and has coordinated and developed numerous theoretical and clinical courses for undergraduate, graduate nurse practitioner and PhD programs.

Her research trajectory focuses on underserved populations — particularly Hispanics — and their health behaviors. Her dissertation focus is on breast cancer screening practices of Hispanic women of Southeast Florida. Her work with the underserved Hispanic populations has changed practice through the dissemination of clinical practice-based research on the health beliefs and values of underserved populations, through educating advance practice nurses at improving health care for underserved populations, and by my advocacy work in diversifying the nursing workforce of the future. She has translated and adapted Victoria Champion’s Health Belief Scales (CHBMS) for mammography screening in the Hispanic population the tool is used nationally and internationally. Dr. Medina has obtained several grants to conduct research and set up pilot educational community-based programs that have assisted in increasing healthy screening behaviors in Hispanic women in Southeast Florida. Other funded research resulted in testing a “Hispanic Culturally Sensitive Community Outreach Educational Intervention Program” and in the identification of predictors of mammography screening in the funded study. The results of her studies have assisted in the modification of practice for successfully reaching Hispanic populations and changing health care behaviors as it relates to prevention and management of chronic disease: cancer, obesity, diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia.