Alex Ernst

Title(s)	Program Manager, StrategicInfo&PubHealthPrac
School	Chancellor/EVC/FAS
Address	550 16th. Street San Francisco CA 94158
Phone	--
ORCID	0000-0002-9154-8316
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Biography

Education and Training

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

Overview

Alex Ernst is the Strategic Information Technical Advisor based in San Francisco at UCSF within the Global Strategic Information (GSI) group. As 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. In her time at UCSF, Alex has supported TA work in the following countries: Angola, Cambodia, eSwatini, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia.

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 and 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, and leading trainings with facility-based 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 speaker.

Interests

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

Bibliographic

Publications

Publications listed below are automatically derived from MEDLINE/PubMed and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing publications. Researchers can login to make corrections and additions, or contact us for help. to make corrections and additions.

Altmetrics Details

PMC Citations indicate the number of times the publication was cited by articles in PubMed Central, and the Altmetric score represents citations in news articles and social media. (Note that publications are often cited in additional ways that are not shown here.) Fields are based on how the National Library of Medicine (NLM) classifies the publication's journal and might not represent the specific topic of the publication. Translation tags are based on the publication type and the MeSH terms NLM assigns to the publication. Some publications (especially newer ones and publications not in PubMed) might not yet be assigned Field or Translation tags.) Click a Field or Translation tag to filter the publications.

Contact-Tracing Outcomes Among Household Contacts of Fully Vaccinated Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Patients: San Francisco, California, 29 January-2 July 2021. Clin Infect Dis. 2022 08 24; 75(1):e267-e275. 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. PMID: 34928340; PMCID: PMC8755335.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 5 Fields:
Com Communicable Diseases
Translation:Humans Cells PHPublic Health
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 Serv Res. 2022 Mar 15; 22(1):341. 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. PMID: 35292029; PMCID: PMC8922771.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 1 Fields:
Hea Health Services Research
Translation:Humans
Geospatial Transmission Hotspots of Recent HIV Infection - Malawi, October 2019-March 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2022 Mar 04; 71(9):329-334. 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, Nyirenda R, Parekh BS, Shiraishi RW, Kim E, Tobias JL, Curran KG, Payne D, Auld AF. PMID: 35239633; PMCID: PMC8893337.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 2 Fields:
Pub Public Health Vit Vital Statistics
Translation:Humans PHPublic Health
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 Infect Dis. 2022 Jan; 9(1):ofab612. Eliaz A, Blair AH, Chen YH, Fernandez A, Ernst A, Mirjahangir J, Celentano J, Sachdev D, Enanoria W, Reid MJA. PMID: 34993261; PMCID: PMC8717891.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 1
Initial results of recent HIV infection surveillance in Cambodia, 2020. 2021. P.S. Ly, K. Soch, V. Ouk, B. Ngauv, C. Chea, C. Mom, C. Bora, B. Eng, V. Ly, R. Albalak, C. Yang, S. Ebrahim, T. Dobbs, A. Ernst, S. Welty, S. Stephens, L. Buback, B. Kiernan, A. Suthar. View Publication.
Geospatial clusters of recent HIV-1 infection, Malawi, October 2019 - March 2020. 2021. C. Telford, Z. Tessema, M. Msukwa, M. Arons, J. Theu, F.F. Bangara, A. Ernst, G. O'Malley, R. Bhatkoti, T. Dobbs, V. Shanmugam, A. Kabaghe, H. Dale, N. Wadonda-Kabondo, S. Gugsa, G. Bello, B. Parekh, R.W. Shiraishi, A. Jahn, J. Eaton, E. Kim, J.L. Tobias, K.G. Curran, D. Payne, A.F. Auld. View Publication.
Mobilizing a COVID-19 Contact Tracing Workforce at Warp Speed: A Framework for Successful Program Implementation. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2021 Apr 12; 104(5):1616-1619. Celentano J, Sachdev D, Hirose M, Ernst A, Reid M. PMID: 33844648; PMCID: PMC8103469.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 7 Fields:
Tro Tropical Medicine
Translation:Humans Cells PHPublic Health
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 Infect Dis. 2021 Jul; 8(7):ofab171. Reid MJA, Prado P, Brosnan H, Ernst A, Spindler H, Celentano J, Wall-Shui M, Sachdev D. PMID: 34316499; PMCID: PMC8083597.

View in: PubMed Mentions: 3
Development and application of a data-driven approach to identify suspected HIV-1 recent infection clusters for public health response in Vietnam, 2019. 2020. A. Ernst, T.M.T. Tran, T.T.H. Bui, P.D. Manh, K. Curran, C. Said, S. Welty, V.N. Nguyen, T.T.H. Nguyen, G. Rutherford, V.H. Son. View Publication.
Creation and use of a continuous quality improvement (CQI) system to improve HIV-1 recent infection surveillance and routine testing services in Malawi, 2019. 2020. A. Ernst, R. Merai, D. Payne, K. Curran, J. Njala, E. Bambo, N. Smith, S. Welty, S. Vedapuri, R. Myrick, G. Rutherford, R. Nyirenda . View Publication.
Access to Affordable, Healthy Foods in Nashville's Food Deserts: A Sustainable, Social Enterprise Model to Combat Obesity. 2012. Alexandra Ernst, Ravi Patel. View Publication.