Preparing for Pandemic Influenza: The Healthcare Perspective

Sponsored by: Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services

Forum Registration

Note - registration is free but seating is limited

Date - September 20, 2007 (add to calendar)
Location - InterContinental Houston (map)

7:30 am - 8:30 am - Registration & Breakfast
8:30 am - Opening Remarks
2:45 pm - Closing Remarks

Lunch is provided

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Panelists - Herminia Palacio, MD, MPH

Herminia Palacio, MD, MPH, Health Authority for Harris County and Executive Director, Harris County Public Health and Environmental Services

Herminia Palacio received her medical degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, where she was also inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. She completed her residency training at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Primary Care Internal Medicine Program at San Francisco General Hospital. After becoming a Board Certified Internist, she obtained a Masters of Public Health, with an emphasis in Epidemiology, from the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health.

She spent several years on the faculty of UCSF, where she served as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator in several federally funded and private foundation HIV epidemiology and health services research studies. She is an author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and is featured in a permanent exhibit entitled “AIDS: The War Within” established by the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry in 1994. She currently holds faculty appointments at the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas School of Public Health.
Her early activities in the public policy arena have included service on the San Francisco Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Universal Health and the Mayor’s HIV Scientific Advisory Committee. She developed additional expertise in public policy during her tenure as Special Policy Advisor to the Director, San Francisco Department of Public Health.

In addition to her administrative responsibilities as Executive Director of HCPHES, as a local public health authority in the third largest county in the United States, Palacio provides oversight for a wide variety of public health emergency responses. For example, she served as the Medical Branch Director for the Astrodome/Reliant Park mega-shelter operation for over 27,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. She has been invited to give presentations regarding this experience at a variety of venues, such as the 2005 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting and the National Association for City and County Health Officials 2006 Local, State & Federal Public Health Preparedness Summit.

Soon after joining HCPHES, Palacio was elected President of the Texas Association of Local Health Officials (2005). In 2006 she was elected to the Board of Directors of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), and also serves on the NACCHO Chronic Disease Prevention Workgroup. Through these and many other activities, Dr. Palacio continues to apply her broad range of academic, clinical, and public policy experience to meeting the diverse public health challenges of today.'

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