Debbie currently serves as the Deputy Director for the Network of the National Library of Medicine South Central Region (NNLM SCR), housed at UNT Health Science Center and funded by the NIH National Library of Medicine. The mission of NNLM is to advance the progress of medicine and improve public health through increased access to health information, training, and grants. She provides training on health resources from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and coordinates health information outreach throughout the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. She is a professional development trainer on grant writing and is a grant proposal reviewer. Her duties also include course development, classroom and virtual instruction, exhibit coordination, committee involvement, and speaking engagements at conferences. Debbie serves as the liaison in the areas of program planning, consumer health, health literacy, space and astronaut health, for target audiences including K-12 education, science educators, librarians, community organizations, and other health groups. 

Debbie Montenegro holds a Master of Science in Information Science with a Health Informatics Specialization from UNT and a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from SMU. While at SMU, Debbie completed an internship where she worked in the lab with a research team of chemists and biologists. Debbie also completed a teacher certification program and taught both Chemistry and Environmental Science at the senior high school level. While obtaining her master’s degree, she worked at a local public library. After obtaining her graduate degree, she worked as the Learning Resource Center Manager at a nursing school, where she assisted nursing students and faculty. Debbie then worked as a Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Analyst for Baylor Scott & White Health, where she worked on NIH, NHLBI, and industry funded studies. She has been published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging, also in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes (an American Heart Association journal), and as a co-author on an abstract presented at The Society of Thoracic Surgeons 53rd Annual Meeting.