Cecilia Rosales, MD, MS

Cecilia Rosales, MD, MS, is an associate professor in the Community, Environmental and Policy Division at The University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Dr. Rosales, who joined the College in 2005, has offered courses that probe public health policy issues on the U.S.-Mexico border.


Dr. Rosales has worked in the health arena for more than 20 years and in the field of public health for more than 15 years. She served as director of the Office of Border Health for the Arizona Department of Health Services for five years prior to accepting her current position as an associate professor at the College. Dr. Rosales has demonstrated outstanding expertise and scholarship in the areas of program development and implementation, public health administration and policy and health disparities research related to the Southwest.


Her comprehensive understanding of the region has resulted in a unique contribution to the body of knowledge associated with Hispanic, border and binational health in general and to strengthening community-based participatory research and collaboration in the Southwest. The U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission, the Arizona-Mexico Commission, the Border Governors, and the State Health Departments in Arizona and Sonora have all benefited from her innovative and creative strategies for strengthening the public health infrastructure in this region. She has demonstrated leadership, vision, community understanding, and administrative capability. Her deep understanding of the context in which the public health infrastructure can be strengthened at the local, state, national and binational level to address the issues of health disparities in this region is combined with her years of experience and her passionate commitment to the elimination of health disparities. It is this combination, which has allowed her to ask the important research questions, develop and evaluate relevant public health models and provide the leadership for dissemination of these models and policies to the other regions throughout the Southwest.


Most recently, Dr. Rosales was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the U.S. Mexico Border Health Commission representing Arizona.