CDC Vietnam-Supported HIV/AIDS Leader in Vietnam Receives Humphrey Fellowship

Nguyen Van Hung is known as one of Vietnam’s most effective and tenacious leaders in his country’s battle against HIV/AIDS, having served on the front lines for nearly 10 years. His commitment and leadership allowed him to advance from medical officer to Chief Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Provincial AIDS Committee Care and Treatment program. Now his persistence and success is being recognized beyond Vietnam.

Dr. Hung recently became the recipient of the prestigious Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship, an award coordinated by the U.S. State Department. Fellows are selected based on their potential for leadership and their commitment to public service in either the public or the private sector. The fellowship, which began in June, allows him to study and work for a year at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, where he hopes to learn from leading HIV/AIDS experts, become a better manager dedicated to serving his community, and bring more knowledge and skills in HIV/AIDS and preventive medicine back to Vietnam.

The fellowship also provides him with the opportunity to strengthen his already close relationship with CDC, which is somewhat ironic. In 2004, when Vietnam was selected as the first focus country in Asia to receive support from PEPFAR, Dr. Hung was skeptical that CDC could do anything to help his people and country. Once he began working closely with CDC staff, he realized how CDC’s emphasis on using scientific data to help make programmatic decisions could contribute to fighting HIV/AIDS.

It was a lesson that he learned well. According to Dr. Le Truong Giang, his longtime supervisor and Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Health Department, “One of his biggest contributions is helping key government and program leaders understand the value of program data and how to use it to guide and improve the quality of the HIV/AIDS care and treatment programs, such as the successful implementation of the HIVQUAL program in Ho Chi Minh City.”