Appointment of Dr. Thomas A. Kenyon to be Principal Deputy Coordinator and Chief Medical Officer in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator

August 30, 2006

Ambassador Mark R. Dybul, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, has named Dr. Thomas A. Kenyon to be Principal Deputy Coordinator and Chief Medical Officer in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.

Dr. Kenyon will assist the Coordinator with managing the day-to-day implementation of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. He will assist in oversight of all U.S. Government international HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment programs, including ensuring the medical and scientific integrity of those programs.

Ambassador Jimmy Kolker, who has served as Assistant Coordinator and Director of Diplomatic Outreach, has now also been designated as a Deputy Coordinator and will retain the position of Director of Diplomatic Outreach.

The Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator is responsible for implementing President Bush's historic Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The Emergency Plan is the largest commitment ever by any nation for an international health initiative dedicated to a single disease -- a five-year, $15 billion, multifaceted approach to combating the disease in more than 120 countries around the world.

Dr. Kenyon's biography follows:

Biography of Dr. Thomas A. Kenyon

Principal Deputy Coordinator and Chief Medical Officer, Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator

Dr. Thomas A. Kenyon serves as the Principal Deputy United States Global AIDS Coordinator and Chief Medical Officer in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), which leads implementation of President Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Prior to beginning his role in the Coordinator’s Office, Dr. Kenyon served in Namibia for four years as the first Country Director for the Global AIDS Program, National Center for HIV, Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS/CDC). Dr. Kenyon has spent the past 10 years living in and working with host governments in Botswana and Namibia, where he has been instrumental in supporting expanded national responses to rapidly increase access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment programs.

Dr. Kenyon is a board-certified pediatrician and epidemiologist who has lived overseas for 17 years as a clinician, researcher, and program director in Africa and the Caribbean, including Grenada, Swaziland, Botswana, and Namibia. In 1994 he joined the Division of TB Elimination at HHS/CDC and from 1996 to 2002 served as the Director of the BOTUSA Project in Botswana, leading numerous epidemiologic investigations of the TB and HIV co-epidemics and forming a new research partnership with Botswana on HIV prevention interventions. In 1999 he left research and joined HHS/CDC’s Global AIDS Program to collaborate with the Botswana government and local non-governmental organizations to rapidly establish a range of urgently needed HIV-related interventions at the national level. These included behavioral change communications for HIV prevention among youth and the general population, a new network of non-governmental voluntary counseling and testing centers, the national program for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission, improved TB/HIV care, increased laboratory capacity, improved HIV and TB disease surveillance, and the introduction of anti-retroviral therapy. In 2002, Dr. Kenyon transferred to Namibia where has been an integral part of U.S. Government support for the Government of Namibia’s highly successful efforts to introduce and expand counseling and testing, prevention of mother-to-child transmission services, and anti-retroviral therapy at the national level, with a particular emphasis on early infant diagnosis and treatment of HIV in children.

Prior to joining CDC, from 1987 to 1992 he served with Project HOPE in Swaziland as Regional Director for Southern Africa.  In this capacity he established primary health care services for children, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), as HIV was beginning to escalate in southern Africa. From 1985 to 1987 he served as a pediatrician with Project HOPE in Grenada, working to establish a nurse practitioner program in a primary health care setting. In addition to serving overseas, Dr. Kenyon was also the Director of the Communicable Disease Division in the Chicago Department of Health from 1993 to 1994 and practiced as a private pediatrician in Tucson, Arizona.

Dr. Kenyon received his B.S. (1977) from Indiana University and his M.D. (1981) from the University of Missouri – Columbia. He completed his residency in pediatrics at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson (1984), an M.P.H. (1993) in international health from Johns Hopkins University, and HHS/CDC’s training in field epidemiology through the Epidemic Intelligence Service (1994) in the Division of TB Elimination.