Francisco Ruiz

In 2013, Francisco Ruiz joined the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the Team Lead for the National Partnerships Team within the Division of HIV Prevention (DHP). In this capacity, his primary role has been to provide guidance for developing and maintaining partnership initiatives that advance the goals of the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. (EHE) Initiative, National HIV/AIDS Strategy, and other national HIV efforts. He has served on the leadership team that provides strategic direction for the development and dissemination of scientific, visual, and technical communications on HIV. Over the past eight years, he has worked to shape CDC’s HIV messaging and fostered strategic partnerships to ensure the messages reach diverse communities across the country. In addition to supporting the development, implementation and evaluation of
CDC’s Let’s Stop HIV Together campaign, he has led several initiatives including Partnering and Communicating Together (PACT), Community Ambassadors, Clinical Ambassadors, and Business Responds to AIDS.

During his tenure at CDC, Mr. Ruiz has also supported various public health emergencies. For the agency’s 2016 Zika response, he led an interdisciplinary team in Puerto Rico that worked with healthcare providers to ensure women of reproductive age and their partners received timely, culturally-appropriate, and science-based information about Zika prevention. He has also served on several COVID-19 field assignments – Arkansas, Virginia and Puerto Rico – and provided onsite technical assistance on contact investigation, Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC), and community mobilization tactics. He also led CDC’s Vaccine Equity Coordination Unit (VECU) and developed guidance on promising practices to building trust and confidence in COVID-19 vaccines. He worked with other public health experts to develop recommendations on utilizing data to drive effective vaccine implementation and to identify models on optimizing equitable vaccine access among communities historically underserved.

Prior to joining CDC, Mr. Ruiz served as Senior Manager at NASTAD where he provided guidance to state and local health departments on how to address the disproportionate impact of HIV among the most impacted communities, specifically Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ. Additionally, Mr. Ruiz served for two years as Chair of the National Latino AIDS Action Network (NLAAN), a network of civil society and key stakeholders that identifies and prioritizes the key HIV prevention, research and care and treatment needs of Latino communities.

During the DrPH Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public, he plans to explore the implementation of effective and scalable HIV prevention interventions. His proposed study interests will further prepare him to identify evidence-based practices, interventions, and policies that take into consideration sociocultural and structural barriers to health information uptake and engagement in health services. Through a health equity framework, he plans to review effective prevention behaviors – from HIV testing, linkage to and retention in care, and viral suppression – and work to reduce the gap between “evidence” and practice by identifying strategies that maximize the impact of programs and systems in real-world settings.

Originally from Chicago, Mr. Ruiz enjoys spending time with family and friends, exploring different cultures and countries, trying out new vegetarian recipes, and balancing running with his love for cookies. Mr. Ruiz received a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from Loyola University Chicago and an M.S. in Urban Policy Analysis and Management from Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy in New York City.