Mentor - John Santelli, MD, MPH

Dr. John Santelli is a Professor of Population and Family Health and Pediatrics and was a past chair of the Department of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School from 2004-2016. Dr. Santelli has conducted policy-related research on HIV/STD risk behaviors, trends in teen fertility, programs to prevent STD/HIV/unintended pregnancy, school-based health centers, adolescent preventive services, and research ethics. Dr. Santelli serves a senior consultant for the Guttmacher Institute and a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Adolescent Health. He was a member of the 2016 Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing and is a past-President of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. He has been a national leader in ensuring that adolescents have access to medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education, and are appropriately and ethically included in health research. He has been the principal investigator of several NICHD-funded projects on HIV risk among youth and linkages between HIV infection and reproductive health with the Rakai Health Sciences Program in southern Uganda. Prior to coming to Columbia in 2004, he worked for 18 years in local and national public health, including service at the Baltimore City Health Department and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.