Kathleen Ethier, PhD, serves as the Director of the Program Performance and Evaluation Office at CDC. In this role, she contributes to advancing CDC program strategy, performance measurement, and evaluation. Dr. Ethier previously was the Deputy Associate Director for Program, providing management and direction to the office’s staff and acting on the Associate Director’s behalf when necessary.
Dr. Ethier joined CDC in 1999 to lead the development and evaluation of interventions to prevent HIV, STDs and teen pregnancy. Since her start at CDC as a Senior Scientist in the Division of STD Prevention, she has served in a variety of leadership and management roles at CDC, including as the Acting Director of the Financial Management Office, Acting Director of the Division of Oral Health and the Adolescent Health Goal Team Leader. 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 PhD 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.