Dr. Hernández is originally from Puerto Rico, is bilingual and has worked for 31 years in the health and human service field developing, implementing, and evaluating culturally and linguistically intelligent youth and adult health prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery support programs. Also, Dr. Hernández has many years of experience in delivering addiction counselling and clinical supervision to professionals in the field. Furthermore, he is a professional trainer and facilitator and provides individualised technical assistance and support to organisations that provide addiction prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery
supports. Haner is a person in long-term recovery from addiction and is committed to eliminating health disparities by working at the national, state, and local levels. He is currently a Senior Consultant to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, with a focus on disparities, building health equity, addiction treatment, recovery supports, and the Recovery Support Centers located throughout the Commonwealth. He also consults and teaches a number of courses at the New England Addiction Technology Transfer Center (ATTC) at Brown University and the National Latino and Hispanic Mental Health TTC. Dr. Hernandez was appointed to SAMHSA Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS) steering committee in 2014 and the Criminal Justice Policy Committee in 2018. He has served a consultant to several federally-funded initiatives in the areas of behavioural workforce development, HIV/AIDS, Substance Use Disorders prevention and treatment, military service members, their families and TBI and PTSD, and paediatric asthma. Dr. Hernández serves as
faculty at the New England School of Addiction Studies since 1998, has taught a number of undergraduate and graduate courses, and has presented at several national and state conferences. Dr. Hernández serves as President of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Board for Voluntary Certification of Drug and Alcohol Counsellors, is a member of the Board of the Massachusetts Organisation for Addiction Recovery (MOAR), was appointed to the Springfield Public Health Council in 2006, and served on the Massachusetts Governor’s Latin American Advisory Commission in Massachusetts from 2000-2004.