Meet Dr Dennis Flores @dfloresrn Assistant Professor @PennNursing

On PopHealth Week series on health equity, the social determinants of health and associated disparities exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic Dr. Flores discusses the impact on the LBGTQ community.

Dr. Dennis Flores is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, an affiliated faculty at the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Program, and is a Visiting Professor at the Center for Research on AIDS at Yale University’s School of Public Health. He has led several studies that investigates the role of parents in the sexual health education of their adolescent sons who identify as LGBTQ.

Through interventions around inclusive parent- child sex communication, he believes that the early provision of sexual health information attuned to the attractions, behavior, and identities of LGBTQ adolescents can reduce the formation of risky sexual behavior and this population’s risks for HIV and STI infection. With an awareness of the personal and contextual factors that increase sexual minority populations’ vulnerability for HIV/STI infection and poor care-related outcomes, the first study Dr. Flores led investigated the conditions that contributed to the recent HIV infection of young gay men in Atlanta. That study has fueled his subsequent HIV prevention work that includes both urban and rural community education, being a national spokesperson for HIV testing campaigns, and workforce development with around 1200 nurses across three continents.

His commitment to HIV/AIDS care and leadership throughout his career includes serving in various leadership roles for the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. Dr. Flores earned his PhD from Duke University, a Masters in Public Health Nursing Leadership at Emory University, and a Bachelors in Nursing from Kennesaw State University.