Focus: Shannon Hader and the HIV and AIDS Epidemic in DC

Dr. Hader is a public health doctor with a long-standing commitment to the HIV/AIDS response and a focus on translating information to action. Until her appointment by Mayor Fenty, she was on detail from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the Department of State in the District of Columbia as the Senior Scientific Advisor for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). She focused on starting up the Public Health Evaluation Initiative for the $15 billion worldwide program which will inform evidence-based, cost-effective HIV/AIDS programming around the globe.

Hader played a critical role in developing the 2007 HIV Implementers Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda-an international meeting of HIV implementers to share best practices and under the joint sponsorship of international organizations such as PEPFAR, Global Fund, World Bank and UNICEF. She recently completed a 3-year tour as director of CDC-Zimbabwe. During that time, the US Government HIV Team in Zimbabwe supported activities to reduce the prevalence of HIV, expand the number of persons tested and receiving care and support for HIV, and initiate HIV treatment for approximately 40,000 persons.

Hader first joined CDC in 1999 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, and has addressed issues such as emerging epidemics in rural Mississippi and rural Russia, women and HIV in the United States, adherence and directly observed antiretroviral therapy, and development of HIV treatment programs in resource-poor settings. She has worked clinically caring for children and adults in the United States and abroad, in Brasil, China, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe.

Hader completed her undergraduate degree at Stanford University, medical school at Columbia University, residencies in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Duke University, and fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Emory University Hospital. She is currently adjunct clinical faculty at Emory University, and was a 2007 Katherine Houghton Hepburn Fellow at Bryn Mawr College.