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Heidi J. Worabo, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC

Associate Professor/Clinical

Heidi J. Worabo, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, is a board-certified family nurse practitioner and associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) School of Nursing. Dr. Worabo serves as the Co-Director of the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program and the Family Nurse Practitioner track coordinator. Her mission is to expand access to primary and preventive healthcare for vulnerable communities both locally and globally through holistic, compassionate, and sustainable care. She enjoys sharing her passion for patient-centered, culturally sensitive care with the next generation of healthcare professionals through didactic and clinical education. For more than a decade, she has provided primary care for patients at the Employee and Student Health Center, Wellness 360, and serving as Co-Director of the San Antonio Refugee Health Clinic (SARHC). The SARHC is a free clinic for newly resettled refugees that is managed by a dynamic interprofessional team of students and faculty dedicated to the wellbeing of refugees, while providing students with service-learning experiences that shape their career trajectory.

Dr. Worabo earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana and a Masters of Science in Nursing (MSN) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville at which time she traveled to Ethiopia to complete her thesis entitled, “Perceptions of HIV Testing in Pregnant Women of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.” While working as a family nurse practitioner, she completed the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree at the University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Nursing in 2012. Her doctoral project was a qualitative study on resettled refugees’ perceptions of healthcare in the U.S.

Her clinical practice includes working as a registered nurse on an acute care pediatric unit, a telemetry unit, and a hospital-based clinic. As a family nurse practitioner, she worked for Children’s Gastroenterology specialty practice and then for the Institute for Family Medicine of St. Louis where she provided primary care at county-based health centers, school-based health centers, a domestic violence women’s shelter, and a refugee resettlement agency. She has traveled with academic and faith-based organizations to Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Namibia. She advocates for cross-cultural, interprofessional experiences for students both domestically and internationally to promote cultural understanding and compassionate care with a global perspective.