Karen Stewart, MPH, CHES

Stewart visits a community based program for AIDS/HIV victims and their families in Zambia.

Karen graduated from East Tennessee State University’s College of Public and Allied Health in 2000 with a masters degree in public health. She conducted her thesis research with Dr. Joanne Walker Flowers, the chair of the Department of Public Health. During her tenure at ETSU, Karen participated in the interdisciplinary, rural Graduate Health Education Program, ran by the Office of Rural and Community Health and Community Partnerships under the leadership of Bruce Behringer. Working for Dr. Bruce Goodrow as Program Coordinator for the ETSU based Tennessee Tobacco Surveillance and Evaluation Program in Rogersville, Tennessee, Karen worked to launch the state’s comprehensive adolescent tobacco use assessment which surveyed over 40,000 middle and high school youth in Tennessee in 2000.

In 2001, Karen was accepted to the federal Presidential Management Fellowship program and moved from her home of Rogersville, Tennessee to Washington, DC in order to gain federal public health experience. In her federal service, Karen has served in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Federal Office of Rural Health Policy at the Health Resources and Services Administration; the Office of HIV/AIDS Policy and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness at the Office of the Secretary; the White House Office of National AIDS Policy and the State Department’s Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.

Her work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has included working with federal agencies focused on domestic and international HIV/AIDS including the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration; national associations and hospital and community biopreparedness efforts, the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services and the Secretary’s Council on Public Health Emergency Preparedness.

In 2002, Karen was asked to serve in the White House Office of National AIDS Policy where she worked on domestic and international HIV/AIDS public health planning. It was during this time that she served as executive secretary to the interagency steering committee for the President’s International HIV/AIDS Mother to Child Prevention Initiative. This program was the precursor to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Karen worked to pass the U.S. Global AIDS legislation, a $15 billion. This 5-year, $15 billion initiative virtually triples the U.S. commitment to international AIDS assistance. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is a sharply focused model of prevention, treatment, and care targeted to the regions of the world where the need for treatment is greatest and is considered the largest public health initiative this century.

In November 2003, Karen moved to the U.S. Department of State with a group of five to establish the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator which was authorized in the Global AIDS legislation. In this capacity, Karen worked federal HIV/AIDS experts within the Department of Health and Human Services, including the NIH, CDC and HRSA, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Peace Corps and other federal agencies in the design, development and implementation of the $15 billion dollar HIV/AIDS program.

In her year at the State Department, Karen was responsible for leading teams of interagency federal employees who traveled to Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia to work with country-based U.S. HIV/AIDS teams, including U.S. Ambassadors. In her role, Karen represented the U.S. in numerous meetings and gatherings with ministers of health and public health officials from these countries as well as World Health Organization and United Nation affiliate AIDS organizations.

On January 14, 2004, Karen was recognized by the White House and State Department as the delegate from the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator’s Office to sit on stage with President Bush during his Administration address. She has also received the U.S. Secretary of Health’s Award for Distinguished Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for serving on hospital and state biopreparedness interagency reviews and a Service Award from the Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for staff work on the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ Rural Initiative.

In November 2004, Karen returned to the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy where she works with the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services. Dr. Joellen Edwards, head of ETSU’s Division of Nursing Research is a member of this 21-member citizens' panel of nationally recognized rural health experts which provides recommendations on rural issues to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. ETSU hosted the Committee June 2005 and heard from a number of ETSU leaders and regional health and human service providers.