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FIU’s School of Social Work Alumni
from FIU Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work - School of Social Work Annual Report 2021
by FIU
Dr. Michelle Thompson graduated with her Ph.D. in Social Welfare from FIU in 2019. After her graduation, Dr. Thompson started a 3-year Office of the Vice Provost for Research Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice where she explores social determinants of health in the community and social context as underlying causes of health disparities among underserved groups. This work expands on her dissertation research, which examined the impact of microaggressions on the health and well-being of emerging adult sexual minorities, with a specific focus on emerging adult sexual minorities of color. During her graduate research assistantship, Dr. Thompson was the project coordinator for the Project SACRED Connections study at the Community-Based Research Institute at FIU; the study was a 5-year R01 research grant funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA; 5R01DA029779-05) devoted to reducing substance use problems among Native American teens in rural communities in the Midwestern United States.
Alumna continues impactful work at the United States Department of Health and Human Services
Since 2019, Lieutenant Adelaida M. Rosario, Ph.D., has been a scientist in the Office of the Surgeon General, the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Before her work in the Office of the Surgeon General, Lt. Rosario worked as a health specialist at the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she studied the connections between behaviors and social and cultural determinants and how these factors affect health disparities for different minority communities. She worked with Hispanic and Pacific Islander populations to study how these factors relate to early childhood development, mental health, risk behaviors, HIV/AIDS prevention, and substance abuse. Dr. Rosario has also explored the role of indigenous spiritual systems and how they may complement traditional healthcare systems.
Lt. Rosario began her work at NIMHD during the last year of her doctoral program in social welfare at FIU’s School of Social Work. She subsequently earned her Ph.D. in social welfare from FIU in 2014, where she studied the psychosocial effects of an indigenous religion practiced by Latina women with cancer. In 2018, Lt. Rosario was inducted into the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS).
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