Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support (CSTLTS)
José T. Montero, MD, MHCDS
José T. Montero, MD, MHCDS, is the director of the Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Support, where he oversees support to the US health departments and those serving tribal nations and insular areas. He provides leadership for key activities and technical assistance designed to improve the public health system’s capacity and performance to achieve the nation’s goals in population health. With his team, Dr. Montero leads efforts to create communities of practice where CDC’s senior leaders work with the executive leaders of the public health jurisdictions, key partners, and stakeholders to identify new, improved, or innovative strategies to prepare the public health system to respond to changing environments.
Previously, Dr. Montero served as vice president of population health and health system integration at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene. In that capacity, he helped the healthcare system advance its Healthy Monadnock population health strategy. Key components of this process were improved partnerships with all organizations engaged in addressing social determinants of health for the population served and development of a sustainability pathway for the region’s population health strategy.
For seven years, Dr. Montero served as director of the Division of Public Health Services at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). In that role, he led the delivery of high-quality, evidence-based services and prompt response to public health threats and emerging issues in the state. Dr. Montero was credited with maintaining New Hampshire’s reputation as one of America’s healthiest states. He oversaw the development and implementation of policies that advanced a healthier population, as well as the development of the state public health improvement plan and its implementation at the regional level. Under his leadership, DHHS developed a systematic approach for collecting, using, and disseminating actionable data and improved coordination between public health and health care. In New Hampshire, Dr. Montero also served as chief of New Hampshire’s Bureau of Communicable Disease Control, deputy director for public health emergency preparedness and response, and state epidemiologist.
Dr. Montero has extensive experience in public health leadership and in the prevention and control of infectious diseases. His major academic and practice interests are related to social determinants of health, public health systems, and the integration of public health and population approaches into clinical practice.
Dr. Montero has held many national and regional committee leadership positions, including serving as president of the board of directors of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and chair of ASTHO’s Infectious Diseases Policy Committee. He worked closely with CDC as a member of the board of scientific advisors for the Office of Infectious Diseases, as a member of the Social Determinants of Health Think Tank, a subgroup of the STLT Subcommittee to the Advisory Committee to the Director of CDC, and as a member of the CDC Advisory Committee to the Director of CDC to prevent tuberculosis in healthcare settings. He has also served on the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the National Academy for State Health Policy, the National Academies of Medicine, Sciences, and Engineering Roundtable on Population Health Improvement, the New Hampshire Citizens Health Initiative, Dartmouth Medical School’s Leadership Preventive Medicine Residency Advisory Committee, and the Foundation for Healthy Communities.
Dr. Montero holds a medical degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He specialized in family medicine and completed his residency at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. He also holds an epidemiology degree from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia, received his certification of field epidemiology from the Colombia Field Epidemiology Training Program and a master’s of healthcare delivery science from Dartmouth College.