Dr. Cruz serves as a Behavioral Scientist at Mountainside Hospital, Family Medicine Residency Training Program, Hackensack Meridian Health system. He is interested in addressing health disparities among African-Americans and Latinos, which include examining institutional and systemic discrimination, and microaggressions as explanatory mechanisms. He is also interested in mindfulness, existentialism and meaning in life, as protective factors against stress. In addition to disseminating his work in peer reviewed journals, Dr. Cruz supervises an integrative health training program; a collaboration between Seton Hall University and Mountainside Hospital, where he and a team of healthcare providers directly impact the healthcare of minority populations, in hopes of reducing health disparities.