Harold W. Jaffe, MD, MA

Associate Director for Science

In June 2010, Dr. Harold Jaffe began his service as Associate Director for Science at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). An internationally recognized scientist and public health leader, Dr. Jaffe is returning to CDC from the University of Oxford, UK, where he has served as Professor and Head of the Department of Public Health and Fellow of St Cross College since 2004.

Dr. Jaffe received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He trained in internal medicine at UCLA Hospital and in infectious diseases at the University of Chicago Hospitals. In 1981, he joined a CDC task force investigating a new disease, soon to become known as AIDS. He led the first national case-control study to determine risk factors for the disease and the first natural history study of HIV. Over the next 2 decades he served in leadership positions in CDC’s expanding HIV/AIDS programs, including Director of the Division of HIV/AIDS, Director of the Division of AIDS, STD, and TB Laboratory Research, and Director of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention. He also spent a sabbatical year at The Institute of Cancer Research in London, UK.

At Oxford, Dr. Jaffe established a new master’s degree program in Global Health Science. The course, now in its fifth year, has trained almost 100 students, half of whom come from developing countries.

Dr. Jaffe is a member of the Institute of Medicine of The National Academies, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and has been a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health. His research interests include a focus on HIV/AIDS and global health.