Nayda I. Román-Vázquez

Dr. Nayda I. Román-Vázquez, PhD, earned a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus. Since 2015, she has been working at the Puerto Rico Department of Health’s Commission on Suicide Prevention, the government entity responsible for implementing suicide prevention public policy in Puerto Rico. She has developed and offered suicide prevention workshops to personnel from government agencies, public and private education institutions, health facilities, and faith-based communities, among other sectors. In 2017, in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria, Dr. Román-Vázquez visited communities across the archipelago to offer psychological support and debriefing services to affected people staying at emergency shelters.

In 2020, Dr. Roman- Vázquez was project manager of the Suicide Prevention in Disaster Situations Project, which was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through jurisdictional recovery funds received by the Puerto Rico Department of Health. She was responsible for developing work plans to meet CDC guidelines for federal funding, recruiting and supervising project personnel, and overseeing programmatic project and training activities.

Currently, she serves as the director of the Commission on Suicide Prevention and aims to address suicide prevention with compassion and respect toward people’s suffering.