Scholar Profile

Brian Antonio Garcia is a member of the 10th cohort of Hillman Scholars in Nursing Innovation. He is a Chicanx interdisciplinary scholar-artist from San Jose, CA and Charlotte, NC. Ni de aquí, ni de allá - his work lives at the intersections of queer identity, art and mental health. Brian graduated from the University of Michigan in 2016 with a BFA in InterArts-Performance, a joint degree from the Stamps School of Art & Design and the School of Music, Theatre and Dance. His autoethnographic integrative project, My Suicide Notes, queried the ripple effects of death, coming out and intergenerational trauma, anchored by the memory of his uncle’s death in 2001. He has performed across the country including at Link’s Hall (Chicago,IL), The Kennedy Center (New York, NY); published in the literary journal Label Me Latina/o; and trained internationally in carnivale community arts (Liverpool, UK) and devising theater of the oppressed workshops (Florianópolis and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

Brian Garcia is a recent ABSN graduate nurse completing their psychiatric clinical fellowship at UNC. Their research interests include suicide risk behavior prevention and protective factors in LGBTQ+ and Latine young adults and multi-disciplinary approaches to public health interventions for mental wellness through social connection. He has been a certified Mental Health First Aid instructor since 2017.

Research Interests: Suicide risk behavior and protective factors, community resilience, LGBTQ+ and Latinx health disparities, queer identity, performativity, social connection, suicide prevention and treatment across care systems, multi-disciplinary approaches to public health interventions.

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