Natalia Giraldo-Santiago,
PhD, MSW

Natalia is a bi-lingual and bi-cultural social worker and a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital working at CHOIR and the Center for Aging and Serious Illnesses (CASI). Natalia earned her MSW and PhD in Social Work at the University of Puerto Rico (2014) and the University of Houston (2022), respectively. Natalia's research career is driven by over five years of clinical experience in a variety of inpatient and outpatient mental health settings in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Phoenix, Arizona.

Natalia's research seeks to conduct cultural and linguistic adaptations of mental health-focused Evidence-Based Practices (EBPs) and evaluate the quality and effectiveness with Latinx and Spanish-speaking populations. Her research seeks to address mental health disparities by improving the adoption of EBPs among social workers, and consequently, their delivery to racial/ethnic minorities and older populations in low-income and under-resourced community settings.