Hank Tomlinson Named New Director of the Division of Global HIV & TB at CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has named Hank Tomlinson, PhD, as the new Director of the Division of Global HIV & TB (DGHT). Dr. Tomlinson previously served as the principal deputy director for the DGHT and became the Acting Director in October 2017. He was based in the CDC’s country office in Abuja, Nigeria.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Emory University, Dr. Tomlinson completed a doctorate in clinical psychology from Duke. Before working for the CDC, he was a clinical psychologist and an undergraduate and graduate-level instructor, teaching courses on topics such as health, behavioral science, and quantitative methods.

Dr. Tomlinson’s career with the CDC began in 2008 when he worked in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP) in the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention first as a senior scientist and then as the acting associate chief for Science for DHAP’s Capacity Building Branch. According to an email statement from Rebecca Martin, PhD, director for the Center for Global Health at the CDC, some of the efforts that Dr. Tomlinson has led or co-led include, “efforts to estimate the cost-effectiveness of behavioral interventions, prioritize interventions for continued CDC support and scale up as part of CDC’s domestic pivot to high impact HIV prevention. He also promoted the adoption and implementation of programs that utilize individual-level HIV surveillance data to identify persons living with HIV who are out of care and link them to or re-engage them in care.”

According to Dr. Martin, “DGHT is at the forefront of the global responses to HIV and TB. The Division is a major contributor to worldwide President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) achievements, and it is accelerating progress toward reaching the goals of the End TB Strategy.”