STD PM Faculty Biographies
WEEK 2
Charlie Rabins, M.P.H., is currently employed by Health Care Education and Training, Inc., located in Carmel, Indiana, as a senior policy and data analyst. Prior to January 2011, Charlie has worked on STD prevention and containment for more than 37 years at the local, state and federal levels. He was Chief of the Illinois Department of Public Healths (IDPH) Sexually Transmitted Disease Section from 1989 through 2010 and principal investigator on the IDPHs Adult Viral Hepatitis Prevention Coordinator grant from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2007 through 2010. Charlie also served as acting chief of the Departments HIV/AIDS Section from 2000-2003. He has been involved in the Illinois HIV Prevention Community Planning Group and the Region V Infertility Prevention Project (RVIPP) Steering Committee since their inception and served as RVIPP co-data manager since 1997. At the national level, Charlie served as chair of the National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD) from May 1998 to February 2000 and was a member of its executive committee from 1996 to 2007 and again in 2010. Charlie received the IDPH Outstanding Leadership Award in 1996, the Illinois Public Health Associations Distinguished Service Award in 1997, a 2001 Leadership and Vision Award from the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and the Jack N. Spencer Award from CDC in 2010 for a career of exceptional contributions to excellence in STD prevention. Charlie was a fellow of the Midwest Public Health Leadership Institute and also served as a faculty member for the CDC National STD Program Managers Training Course since 2009.
Karen Thompson, has worked with at-risk populations in the areas of mental health, developmental disabilities, trauma, substance abuse, and sexual health for the past18 years and has served as the STD Program Manager and HIV Partner Services Manager for the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) for eight years before returning to working more closely with the disabilities populations. She remains a contractor for IDPH serving as a grant reviewer for the Bureau of HIV/STD/Hepatitis and for the Bureau of Maternal and Child Health. Karen holds a Bachelors degree in Psychology from Nebraska Wesleyan University, and is a past Licensed Bachelor of Social Work and past Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor.
WEEK 3
Dr. Michael Samuel, has extensive experience in biostatistical and epidemiologic analysis and consulting related to sexual and reproductive health. Currently he is the chief of the Surveillance and Epidemiology Section of the Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Control Branch of the California Department of Public Health. In this capacity, he oversees the system of legally-mandated reporting of STD cases by medical providers and laboratories in California, as well as a wide range of enhanced STD surveillance and prevalence monitoring activities. In this capacity he is responsible for oversight of the systems for collection, analysis, and dissemination of data on STDs in California.
Previously he worked as a Medical Epidemiologist for the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) component of the California Emerging Infections Program where he directed foodborne disease outbreak investigations and collaborated on national case-control studies and surveillance projects. Prior to that, Dr. Samuel was in charge of HIV/AIDS Epidemiology for the State of New Mexico. In New Mexico he was also part of the infectious disease epidemiology team, and worked on zoonotic diseases, including hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, plague, and rabies. He has assisted with international HIV/AIDS, biostatics, and related computer application trainings in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua and El Salvador and was in charge of the Swiss Federal AIDS Epidemiology Unit in Switzerland.
Dr. Samuel's education includes B.S., M.P.H. and Dr.P.H. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, with emphasis on biostatistics and epidemiologic methods. His doctoral work was with Professor Warren Winkelstein on sexual transmission of HIV in the San Francisco Men's Health Study.
Dr. Samuel has teaching experience at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of New Mexico, on epidemiologic methods, outbreak investigation, and leads seminars/courses on effective visual display of epidemiologic data.
He has published extensively in professional literature on infectious disease epidemiology.
Mark R. Stenger, received a Bachelors of Science Degree in Chemistry from Washington College in Maryland and a Masters in Anthropology/Ethnology from the University of New Mexico in 1992. Mr. Stenger joined the AIDS Epidemiology Unit with the New Mexico State Department of Health in 1994 as an epidemiologist and in 1999 moved to the Pacific Northwest to take a position with the Washington State Department of Health where he served until 2011 as the states STD epidemiologist. During his tenure in Washington State, Mr. Stenger has worked extensively on supplemental and enhanced STD surveillance (including CDC initiatives such as OASIS and SSuN), analyses of HIV/STD co-morbidity, registry matching, geocoding and geographic analyses and numerous HIV supplemental projects.
Mr. Stenger joined the Epidemiology and Surveillance Branch with CDCs Division of STD Prevention as an epidemiologist in July of 2011. He is currently working as Co-Project Officer for the STD Surveillance Network (SSuN) and member of the branchs Surveillance and Special Studies Team.
WEEK 4
Amy Peterson, has seventeen years of experience in HIV/STD and public health. She has worked in a number of roles for the Michigan Department of Community Health, Division of Health Wellness and Disease Control since 1996. Amy first served as trainer of HIV prevention counselors, then as the Technical Assistance Coordinator for HIV prevention. Since June 2007 she has been employed in the STD Section as the Infertility Prevention Project Coordinator.
Amy received her Master of Public Health in December 2003 from Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and completed her undergraduate studies in Minority-Majority Relations at Michigan State University.
Stephanie S. Spencer, has worked for the California Department of Public Health Tuberculosis Control Branch for seven and a half years. Currently she is the Program Liaison to TB Control Programs in eleven local health departments, providing technical assistance and consultation on program evaluation and improvement.
Stephanie holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in anthropology and also completed doctoral studies and dissertation research in socio-cultural anthropology. As part of her doctoral work, she conducted two years of ethnographic research in rural Java, Indonesia. She has also lived in Peru, the Middle East, North Africa, and France, and is proficient in Indonesian, Spanish and French.
WEEK 5
Katherine Hsu, MD, MPH, FAAP, is the Medical Director for the Division of STD Prevention & HIV/AIDS Surveillance, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Director of the Ratelle STD/HIV Prevention Training Center of New England, and co-Chair of the National Network of STD/HIV Prevention Training Centers. She is also an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Attending Physician in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Boston University Medical Center. Dr. Hsu graduated from Brown University School of Medicine in 1995, completed pediatric residency at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in 1998, and completed fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Boston University Medical Center in 2001. She also completed a second STD Prevention Fellowship jointly sponsored by the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2003, and received her Masters in Public Health in Epidemiology from the Boston University School of Public Health in 2005.
She was a recipient of the Massachusetts Infectious Disease Societys Edward H. Kass Award for Clinical Excellence During Fellowship in 2001. She is board certified in the areas of Pediatrics and Pediatrics Infectious Diseases, and is a Fellow of American Academy of Pediatrics. She is also a certified colposcopist through the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathologys Colposcopy Mentorship Program.
Dr. Hsus research interests include vaccine-preventable diseases and prevention of sexually transmitted infections, and she has published in various scientific journals, including Vaccine, Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, and Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.
Ralph Wilmoth, serves the people of Colorado at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment as the STI (sexually transmitted infection)/HIV Section Chief in the Disease Control and Environmental Epidemiology Division. He has been with the department since 2007 with previous public health experience in the areas of infectious disease (STI, including HIV, and tuberculosis), environmental health, and information management. Mr. Wilmoths public health service includes federal, state and local positions in Missouri, North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa prior to coming to Colorado. His educational experience includes a bachelors degree in health education and masters degrees in public health and public administration.