Eugenia Millender

Dr. Eugenia Millender leads the Faculty Development Core and serves as a Multiple Principal Investigator on the Project. Dr. Millender is a tenured Associate Professor in the College of Nursing and an Indigenous Afro-Latina scientist dedicated to increasing health equity, decreasing co-occurring mental disparities and cardiovascular disease, and providing culturally appropriate care to reduce disparities. She has done so by working with community-based organizations and interprofessional teams for the last 20 years. In 2014, she founded the Christine E. Lynn Community Health Center at Florida Atlantic University, dedicated to providing quality integrated care (mental health and primary care) and telehealth services while utilizing this setting as a vibrant learning laboratory for scientists. Dr. Millender developed a data repository for scientists and practitioners to create data-driven clinical interventions focusing on connecting research and practice at the community level. In 2017, she became an Associate Professor in the Center for Indigenous Nursing Research for Health Equity at FSU. In 2020, Dr. Millender became the Co-Founding Director and Co-Director (2022) of the Center of Population Sciences for Health Equity at FSU. As a recently tenured scientist navigating the academic system as a woman of color with extensive professional experience with racially and ethnically diverse communities, Dr. Millender is vested in developing culturally appropriate mentoring programs for future URM scientists to create synergistic strategies to eliminate racism and address the myriad health disparities impacting these communities.