Alex Ernst
Program Manager
StrategicInfo&PubHealthPrac
Chancellor/EVC/FAS

Alex Ernst is a Senior Program Manager and Technical Advisor based in San Francisco at UCSF within the Institute for Global Health Sciences.

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As a Technical Advisor, she provides programmatic management and oversight on technical assistance activities including monitoring and evaluation (M&E), HIV surveillance systems, trainings of trainers (TOTs) and step-down trainings, continuous quality improvement (CQI) and data quality assurance (DQA) activities, data triangulation and visualization as well as study design, protocol, and data collection tool development, analysis, and report-writing. From 2020-2021, she worked closely with the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) to stand up, train, and provide technical leadership to the contact tracing team for COVID-19, including the development of data and workflows, SOPs and guides, trainings, QI projects, data matching and cleaning protocols, and data monitoring and visualization dashboards.

She joined the UCSF team after serving as a health sector Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in southern Mozambique, giving her extensive experience working at a district hospital providing HTS, ART, PMTCT, VMMC, and OVC services as well as co-leading community-based AGYW empowerment and malalria prevention initiatives. Her focus was on establishing a community adherence support group program for people living with HIV/AIDS, providing mentorship on M&E, and leading trainings with facility- and community-based health workers. Domestically, she has previous experience as the Executive Director of a social enterprise nonprofit, The Nashville Mobile Market, based out of Vanderbilt University which focused on providing healthy food options and nutrition-based cooking classes to food insecure neighborhoods in Nashville, Tennessee.

She obtained her MPH from the Tulane School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine in Global Health Systems and Development with a focus in Program Design and Implementation. She is a fluent Portuguese and native English speaker.

Awards

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• UCSF Achievement Award, University of California, San Francisco, 2021

Education & Training

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• MPH Global Health Systems and Development, Master's International Tulane University, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine 2016
• BA Biological Sciences, Philosophy Vanderbilt University, College of Arts and Sciences 2011

Interests

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• Health systems strengthening
• Monitoring & evaluation
• COVID-19
• Data visualization
• interpretation
• use
• Surveillance and epidemiology
• HIV/AIDS
• Data quality
• Infectious diseases
• Quality improvement

Publications (7)

Top publication keywords:
Spatial AnalysisMalawiFamily CharacteristicsPublic HealthCambodiaHealth PersonnelSexual and Gender MinoritiesHomosexuality, MaleTransgender PersonsResilience, PsychologicalSan FranciscoSentinel SurveillanceFeasibility StudiesContact TracingHIV Infections

• Programmatic Implications of National Recent HIV Infection Surveillance in Cambodia.
  The Journal of infectious diseases 2023 Suthar AB, Ouk V, Samreth S, Ngauv B, Bain R, Eng B, Hy C, Ernst A, Rutherford GW, Yang C, Ly V, Albalak R
• Contact-Tracing Outcomes Among Household Contacts of Fully Vaccinated Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Patients: San Francisco, California, 29 January-2 July 2021.
  Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America 2022 Sachdev DD, Chew Ng R, Sankaran M, Ernst A, Hernandez KT, Servellita V, Sotomayor-Gonzalez A, Stoltey J, Cohen SE, Nguyen TQ, Chiu CY, Philip S
• Acceptability and feasibility of HIV recent infection surveillance by healthcare workers using a rapid test for recent infection at HIV testing sites - Malawi, 2019.
  BMC health services research 2022 Arons MM, Curran KG, Msukwa M, Theu J, O'Malley G, Ernst A, Namakhoma I, Bello G, Telford C, Shanmugam V, Parekh B, Kim E, Dobbs T, Payne D, Gugsa S
• Geospatial Transmission Hotspots of Recent HIV Infection - Malawi, October 2019-March 2020.
  MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report 2022 Telford CT, Tessema Z, Msukwa M, Arons MM, Theu J, Bangara FF, Ernst A, Welty S, O'Malley G, Dobbs T, Shanmugam V, Kabaghe A, Dale H, Wadonda-Kabondo N, Gugsa S, Kim A, Bello G, Eaton JW, Jahn A, …
• Evaluating the Impact of Language Concordance on Coronavirus Disease 2019 Contact Tracing Outcomes Among Spanish-Speaking Adults in San Francisco Between June and November 2020.
  Open forum infectious diseases 2021 Eliaz A, Blair AH, Chen YH, Fernandez A, Ernst A, Mirjahangir J, Celentano J, Sachdev D, Enanoria W, Reid MJA
• Mobilizing a COVID-19 Contact Tracing Workforce at Warp Speed: A Framework for Successful Program Implementation.
  The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene 2021 Celentano J, Sachdev D, Hirose M, Ernst A, Reid M
• Assessing Testing Strategies and Duration of Quarantine in Contact Tracing for SARS-CoV-2: A Retrospective Study of San Francisco's COVID-19 Contact Tracing Program, June-August 2020.
  Open forum infectious diseases 2021 Reid MJA, Prado P, Brosnan H, Ernst A, Spindler H, Celentano J, Wall-Shui M, Sachdev D