Dr. Esperanza Diaz, Professor of Psychiatry at Yale, is spearheading initiatives to improve mental health care access and cultural competency for Latino populations. As medical director of Yale’s Hispanic Clinic and Latino Behavioral Health System, Diaz has developed a model for providing mental health services to limited English proficiency individuals.
She founded the Hispanic Psychiatry Fellowship program to specifically address mental health disparities affecting Latinos. Diaz also played a key role in creating Yale’s Cultural Psychiatry curriculum, which laid the groundwork for the current Social Justice and Health Equity curriculum in the psychiatry residency program.
Diaz’s work extends to medical education, where she leads training on cultural sensitivity and managing microaggressions through Yale’s Teaching and Learning Center. She employs an experiential model to teach interviewing skills to psychiatry residents.
Recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Academic Psychiatry by the American Society of Hispanic Psychiatry, Diaz continues to be at the forefront of efforts to confront racism in psychiatric care and education. Her multifaceted approach aims to create lasting improvements in mental health care delivery for Latino and other underserved populations.
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