David Garcia

David Ray Garcia, (He/Him/His) is a provost’s postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at NYU Meyers College of Nursing. 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, 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 ahead of print in the journal Nursing Research.

As a postdoctoral fellow, 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. He is also focusing on grant development for an intervention that aims to decrease HIV testing hesitancy among young Black and Latino gay and bisexual men.

Prior to joining the faculty as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor at NYU Meyers in 2022, Garcia was an adjunct clinical instructor for the Master of Science program and has also mentored numerous undergraduate nursing students in the Bachelor of Science program. Garcia is a double board-certified family nurse practitioner and previously held a clinical position at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the Men’s Sexual Health and Reproductive Medicine Program treating sexual and hormonal dysfunction in men surviving cancer.