New Leadership Takes Office for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Sept. 13, Jose Montero, director of the Division of Public Health Services at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), was elected president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) during the association's annual meeting in Austin, Texas. Mary Currier, state health officer of the Mississippi State Board of Health, was reelected as secretary-treasurer at the same meeting. Terry Cline, commissioner of the Oklahoma State Department of Health, became president-elect. All take office immediately.
Montero began his medical career in Putumayo, Colombia, where he served as Colombia's public health director, consultant in family medicine, HIV surveillance and prevention project director, and advisor to both the vice president of the Social Security Institute of Colombia and the director of Juan XXIII local health system in Bogota, Colombia. He began his New Hampshire service in 1999 as chief of the New Hampshire Communicable Disease Section within the Division of Public Health. Before becoming director of the New Hampshire Division of Public Health Services, Montero held the position of state epidemiologist at DHHS.
Currier became Mississippi's state health officer in 2010 after serving as state epidemiologist from 1993 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2009. Prior to serving as state epidemiologist, she was a medical consultant with the agency. She began her public health career with the Mississippi State Department of Health as a staff physician for the prenatal care, family planning, STDs, and pediatrics programs.
Cline has served as Oklahoma's commissioner of health since June 2009 and as Oklahoma's Cabinet secretary of health and human services since 2011. He previously completed a post as health attache at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, where he advised the U.S. ambassador, the Iraqi minister of health, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on health-related challenges in Iraq. Cline served in this capacity under the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
David Lakey, Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, became immediate past president; and John Auerbach, Massachusetts's Commissioner of Public Health, became past president. All ASTHO offices are one-year positions.
ASTHO is the national nonprofit organization representing the public health agencies of the United States, the U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia, as well as the more than 100,000 public health professionals these agencies employ. ASTHO members, the chief health officials of these jurisdictions, are dedicated to formulating and influencing sound public health policy and to ensuring excellence in state-based public health practice. Web: www.astho.org; Twitter: @ASTHO.
SOURCE Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
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