About CDC

The CDC Leaders

Harold W. Jaffe, MD, MA

Associate Director for Science

Dr. Jaffe received his undergraduate degree in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley, and his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.  He trained in internal medicine at the UCLA Medical Center and in infectious diseases at the University of Chicago hospitals.

He served as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).  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 and in 2001 became 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.

In 2004, Dr. Jaffe accepted a position as Fellow of St Cross College and Head of the Department of Public Health at the University of Oxford.  At Oxford, he established a new master’s degree program in Global Health Science.  The course has trained more than 130 students, half of whom come from developing countries.  In June 2010, he returned to CDC to become the Associate Director of Science. 

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.