Dr Theresa Diaz

Dr Diaz earned joint degrees in Medicine and Public Health (M.D./ M.P.H.) from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Columbia School of Public Health. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Hospital in New York. She completed the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) training at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during which she worked in the Puerto Rico Health Department and was responsible for infectious disease surveillance. She also completed a Preventive Medicine Residency at CDC focused in the area of HIV/AIDS surveillance. She worked for CDC in 20 years working mostly working on HIV/AIDS domestically and globally including two years assigned to PAHO Brazil. She was also assigned to the Center for Urban Epidemiological Studies at the New York Academy of Medicine where she served as the Deputy Director of the Center. While at CDC she served as the Global AIDS Surveillance team leader, and the Branch Chief of the Epidemiology and Strategic Information Branch of the Global AIDS Program. She oversaw all activities in the areas of surveillance, monitoring and evaluation, informatics, and statistics and worked closely with the Strategic Information unit of the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief assuring that Congress and country offices have quality data to assess the progress and impact of their programs.

Dr Diaz served as the lead of the Knowledge Management and Implementation Research Unit in the Health Section in UNICEF, NY.  She worked on supporting implementation research in various countries in the area of child health specifically in integrated community case management as well as use of routine health information data for child health program planning. More recently she joined World Health Organization and now serves as the Unit Chief of the Epidemiology and Monitoring and Evaluation team in the Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing Department.