Dr. Armando Fuentes recently completed his ARRT fellowship at NYU Rusk Rehabilitation. While doing so, he focused on racial and cultural health disparities in traumatic brain injury. In October 2018, he began working as a clinician at the World Trade Center Survivors Clinic in Elmhurst Hospital, where he hopes to build a culturally informed mental health and clinical training program. He graduated with his PhD in clinical psychology from Fordham University where his research focused on culture, health beliefs, and neurocognition among Latinx patients living with HIV.
In this interview, Dr. Fuentes discusses: his presentation at a Rusk course on October 20 and 21, 2018 to highlight some of the latest evidence in complex TBI rehabilitation; clinical practice guidelines in general and for TBI patients from racial and ethnic groups in particular; outcomes in overall functioning by members of minority groups compared to whites; and lower retention rates in TBI research by Hispanics one to two years post-injury.