Dina Garcia, PhD

Assistant Professor
Health Behavior and Policy 
Virginia Commonwealth

Dina T. García, Ph.D., M.P.H. was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She currently resides in Richmond, Virginia where she serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Policy at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Medicine. Her research program examines the social and structural determinants of oral health inequities with the goal of developing community-based interventions targeted at different causal pathways. She is formally trained in community-based participatory research, qualitative and quantitative methods as well as science communication. Her freelance work has appeared in popular publications such as CNN Español. Dra. García is an appointed member of the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion for the American Association for Dental, Oral and Craniofacial Research and serves as a deputy editor for the international journal Teaching and Learning in Medicine. As an advocate for racial and gender equity, she co-founded Cientificas de Milwaukee, which provides bilingual and bicultural STEAM education to students in second through eighth grade. In her spare time, Dra. García enjoys printmaking and spending time with her fur babies Chaak and Koxita.