Town Hall Meeting Speakers

Back to Event Home Page

Speakers' Biographies

Dan Baden, MD

Senior Medical Advisor, Office of State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support, CDC

Dr. Dan Baden is a family physician with CDC. He currently serves as the associate director for External Partner Outreach and Connectivity in the Stakeholder Outreach and Engagement Unit in the Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support. Previously, he served as the director of the Division of Public Health Capacity Development, acting director of the Division of Issues Management and Executive Secretariat, and chief of the Emergency Communications Branch. His public health career began in Ghana, West Africa, where he developed a rural health network and served as a liaison between tribal elders and the Ghanaian Ministry of Health.

Dr. Baden is a board-certified family physician. He earned his medical degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and undergraduate degree in math/computer science and natural science from Concordia University Irvine.

  Top of Page

Dawn Smith, MD, MPH, MS

Biomedical Interventions Activity Lead, Epidemiology Branch, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, CDC

Dr. Smith is the biomedical interventions activity lead in the Epidemiology Branch of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She conducts research and activities supporting the implementation of daily, oral, antiretroviral preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and other biomedical interventions to reduce rates of new HIV infections in the United States, including the development of US Public Health Service clinical practice guidelines for PrEP.

She spent four years as the associate director for HIV research at the CDC field station in Botswana, where she established clinical trial infrastructure with integrated sociobehavioral research and initiated PrEP trials. Dr. Smith has served on scientific committees and review panels for Nation Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Office of AIDS Research, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Smith received her MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and went on to complete an MPH in public health policy and international health, and an MS in clinical research design and statistical analysis at the University of Michigan. As a family physician, Dr. Smith has practiced in a variety of settings. She maintains a strong research interest in the intersections of health care systems, race, ethnicity, social class, injection drug use, and the HIV epidemic.

  Top of Page

Howard A. Zucker, MD, JD

Commissioner, New York State Department of Health

Dr. Zucker is the commissioner of health for New York state, overseeing a $70 billion agency that seeks to promote and protect the health of all New Yorkers. He is board-certified in pediatrics (Johns Hopkins University), anesthesiology (University of Pennsylvania), pediatric critical care (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia), and pediatric cardiology (Boston Children’s Hospital).

Before coming to the state Department of Health, Dr. Zucker was a pediatric anesthesiologist at Montefiore Medical Center, and he ran the pediatric intensive care unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He has held academic appointments at Yale, Columbia, Cornell, and Einstein medical schools; and Georgetown law school. Dr. Zucker has also served on the clinical faculty at the National Institutes of Health. He has served as a White House fellow, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health at HHS, Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization, and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

He holds a BS from McGill University, an MD from George Washington University Medical School, a JD from Fordham Law, a masters in Law from Columbia University, and a postgraduate diploma in global health policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Dr. Zucker worked at Massachusetts General Hospital to create a community peace index for use in conflict regions across the globe, created the nation's Medical Reserve Corps, which now has over 200,000 volunteers, and developed a talking book on health for women in Afghanistan. In addition, he worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), designing research experiments on the Space Shuttle, and was featured as an ABC News ‘Person of the Week.’

  Top of Page

Patrick Stonehouse, MS

Director of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Chicago Department of Public Health

Patrick Stonehouse has served as director of HIV Prevention for the Chicago Department of Public Health, STI/HIV bureau since December of 2015. He has worked in the field of HIV prevention and linkage to care since 1997, working for multiple community-based organizations. Patrick has provided direct service and program design and management focused on populations and communities disproportionately impacted by HIV and other health disparities. Patrick received his master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration.

 Top of Page