Karen Mark

Karen E. Mark, MD, MPH was appointed Chief of the Office of AIDS in the California Department of Public Health in June 2013 and served as the Interim Chief of the Office of AIDS since September 2011. Dr. Mark first joined the Office of AIDS in January 2010 as Chief of the Surveillance, Research, and Evaluation Branch, where her work focused on improving HIV surveillance in California and using HIV surveillance data and Care and Prevention program evaluation data to improve HIV care, treatment, and prevention in California.

Dr. Mark completed her medical training at the University of California, San Francisco, her internal medicine residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and her infectious diseases fellowship and Master of Public Health in epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Mark spent two years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer assigned to the Division of STD and Hepatitis Prevention in San Diego County and several years as a faculty member at the University of Washington, where she studied genital herpes and was the Clinic Director of the Seattle HIV Vaccine Trials Unit, where volunteers participate in HIV vaccine studies with the goal of finding a safe and effective HIV vaccine. Dr. Mark has served as a primary care physician for patients living with HIV/AIDS throughout her career, most recently as a volunteer clinical faculty member at the University of California, Davis Medical Center, seeing patients at the CARES clinic in Sacramento.