Pima County Health Director Named UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson Alumni of Year

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Theresa Cullen, MD, MS, was named the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson’s 2021 Alumni of the Year. She was recognized for her outstanding career in public health and medical informatics at the UArizona Alumni Association’s 2021 Alumni of the Year Awards on November 4th.

As an Associate Professor at the College of Medicine – Tucson’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, Dr. Cullen was named director of the Pima County’s Department of Health and vice president of the county’s Back to Business Task Force in April 2020. In this position, she oversaw the county’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Cullen said she hoped her Alumni of the Year election will encourage others to pursue careers in the service.

“I’m not a researcher. I haven’t found a cure for anything. I have lived a service life that I am really blessed to have the opportunity to do and with a family that really supports me. As a family, we have made conscious choices about my position and work to ensure that it aligns with my moral compass, which is to make the world a better place, ”she said.

“I hope that with this award, which really embarrasses me, inspires other people to understand how we influence the world, it can only be a service.”

Dr. Cullen began her career as a medical services officer at what was then the Indian Health Service hospitals on the San Carlos Apache Reservation and the Tohono O’odham Nation. She then spent 27 years with the US Public Health Service, Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, leading transformative changes in health informatics and earning one star as US Assistant General Surgeon.

In 2015, she became Associate Director of Global Health Informatics at the Regenstrief Institute in Indianapolis and Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Indiana University. During the Ebola crisis of 2014-16, Dr. Cullen volunteered at an Ebola maternity ward in Freetown, Sierra Leone, one of many public health assignments she has held for over three decades.

Dr. Cullen received her bachelor’s degree from Johnston College in Redlands, California and was a senior lecturer at the College of Ganado in the Navajo Nation before entering the College of Medicine – Tucson. After graduating in 1983, she completed her medical internship at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago and completed her residency in family medicine in Arizona, where she served as a senior physician from 1990-91. In 2001 she graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a Masters degree in Administrative Medicine and Population Health. In 2018 she became a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association and in 2020 of the American College of Medical Informatics.

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