Hispanic Heritage Month: Celebrating Contributions and Achievements

It is Hispanic Heritage Month across the United States. The month-long observance that began on Monday, September 15, and ends October 15 honors the contributions and achievements made by “generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society,” according to the U.S. Library of Congress.

The celebration of Hispanic Americans began in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week during former President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration, becoming a 30-day celebration in 1988 under Ronald Reagan.

Two health care leaders with Duke University’s Schools of Nursing and Medicine, Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda and Dr. Viviana Martinez-Bianchi, have devoted their careers to improving health outcomes for Latiné/Hispanic populations.

Gonzalez-Guarda and Martinez-Bianchi were recognized as Trailblazers last year as part of Duke’s Centennial celebrations. The university’s trailblazers are recognized as leaders who will lead the campus into the next century.

An impassioned advocate

A native of Argentina, Martinez-Bianchi joined Duke’s faculty in 2006. She is an associate professor and director of community engagement in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. Martinez-Bianchi is serving a two-year term as president of the World Organization of Family Doctors and was appointed to the President’s Council on Food Fitness and Nutrition in 2023.

From the onset of the pandemic, Martinez-Bianchi became an impassioned advocate for equity with COVID-19 planning, treatment and education. When vaccines became available, she countered vaccine hesitancy in Latino communities by disseminating trustworthy information.

In 2021, Martinez-Bianchi was named the North Carolina Family Physician of the Year by the North Carolina Academy of Family Physicians.

‘Love and respect’ in research

Gonzalez-Guarda is a professor of nursing. She was born in Miami, the daughter of Cubans who emigrated to the United States in the 1970s.

She is on the board of El Futuro, a local community-based mental health organization serving the Latiné/Hispanic community. She uses community-engaged strategies to address issues of violence, substance abuse, HIV and mental health among Latinos in the U.S. and other communities affected by adversity.

Gonzalez-Guarda is the principal investigator of a study funded by the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities to address stress and resilience among Latino immigrant families. She co-directs a training grant funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research, which helps nurse scientists develop models of care to address community and population health.

In an interview this year with the podcast TrustFund, hosted by Duke nursing PhD student Jill Sergison, Gonzalez-Guarda emphasized the value of compassion in research.

“One of the core values that our team has is cariño y respeto, love and respect,” she said. “Scientists don’t often talk about love in research, but we love our participants.”

More than 4,000 employees at Duke identify as Hispanic/Latinx. Antwan Lofton, Duke’s vice president of human resources in a campus-wide email, said Hispanic Heritage Month “provides us another opportunity to reflect on the unique perspectives and backgrounds that come together to deliver on the promise of this extraordinary place called Duke.”