Portland Hires New Public Health Director from Mozambique

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Dr. Alfredo Vergara, Ph.D. has been hired as Portland’s new Public Health Director.  He will start in the role on August 15, 2022 after relocadting to Maine from Mozambiquez where he currently served as the CDC Country Director and Division of Global HIV and TB Program according to a press  health issued by the city this morning.

Dr. Vergara is an epidemiologist with 28 years of exerience in public health program implementation.  He began his service at CDC as an EIS officer in 1993 and has subsequently worked in the areas of Environemntal Health, Global Health and Migration and HIV Aids.  In 2020, Dr. Alfredo opened and established CDC’s first office in Mozambique, focusing on implementation of President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), serving as the CDC Country Director and Public Health Atache in the US Embassy in Mozambiguez.

Dr. Alfredo has served as Associate Director for Program Implementation in the Vanderbilt’s Institute for Global Health (VIGH), leading the development of multi-disciplinary Global Health Program and teaching Public Health.  ‘During his tenure at VIGH, he established multi-disciplinary collaboration across Vandebilt’s schools of Medicine, Education and Business linkig various departments and Institutes with the aim of building applied programs adressing Health and Development.  He taught Environmetal Health as the MPH Program and helped develop the Global Health track of the MPH program.

In 2013, he returned to Mozambique serving as Branch Chief for public health system strengthening in the CDC Mozambique and was named a second time Director for CDC Mozambique in serving as Branch Chief for public health system strengthening at the CDC Mozambique and was named a second time Director for CDC Mozambique in 2016, overseeing a budget of over 180 millionnn USD and a staff of 90+ epidemiologist, clinicians and other scientists implementing programs to achieve epidemic control of HIV in Mozambique.  Dr. Vergara was awarded a B.S. in biomedical engineering by the University of Iowa, a M.S. inencironmental science and a Ph.D. in epidemiooogy by University of Iowa’s Department of Preventive Medicine.

“I am very excited to join a team committed to social inclusion ad comjnityh participation,” said Dr. Vegara.  “The city of Portland has a reputation for providing excellent public health services to a growing, diverse community and I look forward to joining the team that makes this happen.  I am eager to learn and face the challenges to build a better community through collaborative innovation.”

The annual salary for Dr. Vegara will be $106,153..