Leadership

Kathleen A. Ethier, PhD

Deputy Associate Director

Dr. Kathleen Ethier’s role as the Deputy Associate Director for Program includes serving as an advisor to the office’s Associate Director Dr. Janet Collins, providing management and direction to the office’s staff and acting on Dr. Collins’ behalf when necessary.

Dr. Ethier joined CDC in 1999 to lead the development and evaluation of a multi-level intervention to prevent HIV, STDs and teen pregnancy as well as a variety of initiatives to reduce STDs among adolescents. She also has served as the Acting Director of the Division of Oral Health and the Adolescent Health Goal Team Leader. Dr. Ethier is a co-founder of the Workgroup on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (WASRH), a cross-center, cross-division activity to increase collaboration around this important issue. She has participated in a number of committees and initiatives across the agency and with external partners. Prior to joining CDC, she spent six years on the research faculty at Yale University working on studies of HIV, STD and unplanned pregnancy prevention among women, particularly adolescents.

Dr. Ethier’s research has included psychosocial, behavioral, organizational and clinical factors related to women’s health, maternal health and adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Her work has been published widely in peer-review publications, including the American Journal of Public Health, Health Psychology, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Journal of Adolescent Health, and Sexually Transmitted Infections, among others. She has co-authored chapters in edited books, including Women and AIDS: Coping and Care, the Handbook of Health Psychology and Behavioral Interventions for Prevention and Control of STDs.

Dr. Ethier earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where her dissertation examined identity acquisition and change among women during and following their first pregnancy.