Dr. Byrd, is Associate Dean and Chair of the Department of Public Health in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Dr. Byrd received a BSN from the University of Arizona and worked as a public health nurse for several years in the Tucson area before obtaining her Masters of Public Health from University of California Los Angeles.  

She worked in Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico for three years with Proyecto Verdad serving very marginalized populations with basic public health needs, and then went to Houston where she received a Dr.PH in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from the University of Texas School of Public Health, where she worked as a faculty member at the El Paso Regional Campus for almost 20 years. 

Dr. Byrd's research is focused on cancer prevention and screening, especially in the area of cervical and colorectal cancer. She led the development and testing of the AMIGAS program, an intervention to increase cervical cancer screening in Hispanic populations which has been adopted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a recommended intervention.  She was the Director of the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) funded ACCION for Rural West Texas program, which provided free colorectal cancer screening to uninsured people.  Her research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute, CDC and the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT).

• AMIGAS - https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/gynecologic/what_cdc_is_doing/amigas.htm
• Cervical Cancer Among Latinas
• American Journal of Health Promotion