My Account

Dalmacio Dennis Flores, PhD, ACRN, FAAN

Dalmacio Dennis Flores, PhD, ACRN, FAAN
Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

Dalmacio Dennis Flores, PhD, ACRN, FAAN, is an IFNA member and member of the research committee. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, where he conducts research on family-based sexual health promotion for LGBTQ+ adolescents. His team is currently testing interventions designed to improve parents’ knowledge of biomedical treatment options for their queer children and enhance their capacity to be a proximal sexual health educator at home. Dr. Flores’ goal is to help more parents learn more about how they can be proximal sexual health educators for their LGBTQ+ teens.

Dr. Flores started his nursing career as a bedside nurse in what he describes as “the last dedicated unit for HIV/AIDS patients at Grady Hospital in Atlanta.” Caring for these patients highlighted the critical importance of early family acceptance and support, and how family members could help protect patients from negative sexual and mental health outcomes. During his time in Atlanta, Dr. Flores joined the Atlanta chapter of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC). ANAC members demonstrated “fierce advocacy” and fearlessness in their words and actions, which influence Dr. Flores to this day, and spurred his commitment to LGBTQ+ teens and their families.

After he received his PhD, Dr. Flores became a post-doctoral fellow at Penn, where he met Janet Deatrick. Dr. Deatrick’s passion for IFNA prompted him to join the organization and make it his “professional home”. Dr. Flores had just completed two studies that sought parents’ insights into how they could improve the sexual health education they provided to their gay or bisexual sons. Those studies sparked his passion for helping parents recognize the critical impact they have on their sons’ health and wellness. In IFNA, Dr. Flores found a supportive community of family nursing researchers and opportunities to disseminate his work.

Dr. Flores and his lab conduct research with several different groups of parents. One group of studies involves co-developing interventions with parents of LGBTQ+ sons. This effort started with the Parents Advancing Supportive and Sexuality Inclusive Sex Talks, or ASSIST, intervention, which led to a new, 5-year NIH-funded RCT to test the intervention in a larger population. Dr. Flores is thrilled to report that his funding for the project was restored after some uncertainty last spring, and states that he and his team are making up for lost time. During his 8 years as faculty at Penn Nursing, Dr. Flores has expanded his research to include parents of transgender and gender diverse adolescents (The Gender Inclusive Sexuality Talks [GIST] project) and parents of lesbian and bisexual daughters (The Sexual Health Inclusivity during Family Talks [SHIFT] program).

Through these projects, Dr. Flores aims to develop relevant, impactful resources designed for the unique needs of families whose children are navigating adolescence and early adulthood as sexual and gender minorities. His studies have identified the challenges many parents face when trying to verbalize their acceptance of their LGBTQ+ children. He remains committed to helping parents learn how to speak and act in ways that clearly communicate that their children’s health is one of their key priorities. The interventions Dr. Flores and his team have implemented are designed to help parents guide their children to develop healthy sexual behaviors, ultimately improving their long-term mental and physical health outcomes. Dr. Flores keeps going on the hard days because he has seen, firsthand, how supporting parents can help them overcome the challenges they face when trying to talk to their LGBTQ+ children about sexual health. The importance and impact of his work are evident in the welcome he and his team receive when they share information about their studies with parents and young people.

 

Related News