Heather Diaz, Dr.PH., M.P.H.

Consultant

Dr. Heather Diaz is an Associate Professor at Sacramento State University in Health Sciences, assigned to the Community Health Education curriculum. In her role as an Associate Professor, she teaches courses focused on: Community Planning and Evaluation (Grant Writing), Health Epidemiology, Disease Prevention- all taught with a focus on issues of health equity. She also works on various campus based projects aimed to improve the lives of the diverse student body, including an international foreign language project offering a Spanish certificate for students interested in the community health field. The certificate includes coursework aimed at improving the Spanish language ability in students using community health vocabulary and examples, culturally appropriate and sensitive case studies, and an immersion experience working with a local based CBO serving the Spanish speaking population. Dr. Diaz also serves as a managing partner/lead consultant of Community Health Insights, a non-profit entity aimed at changing the lives of community members living in the greater Sacramento and Northern California area through strategic planning, assessment, and evaluation design.

Since 2000, Dr. Heather Diaz has worked to improve the lives of vulnerable populations through public health program development, communitywide health/social assessments and program evaluation consulting. Her early work as a public health professional focused on a variety of programs aimed at improving the lives of immigrant Latino residents in the public health areas of Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular Health. Her graduate research focused on the influence of acculturation status on exercise and healthy dietary habits of Latino adolescents, which has been widely published.

Since 2006, Dr. Diaz has been involved in over 20 community health needs assessments (CHNA) directed at identifying unmet health needs of diverse communities stretching from the San Francisco Bay to San Joaquin County to the California/Oregon border. These assessments combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches to identify unmet community health needs and specific populations experiencing health disparities. These assessments assist in targeting Community Benefit funding by area hospital systems to improve population health at the local level. Dr. Diaz has served as a special public health consultant to Sutter Health Systems, Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health, San Joaquin County Public Health, Solano County Public Health and UC Davis Health Systems since 2007 on the development of the CHNAs and the direction of the resulting community based improvement plans. In 2013, Dr. Diaz was the lead grant writer on the Community Transformation Grant funding, granted to Sierra Health Foundation, which aimed at improving the lives of diverse populations in the greater Sacramento County area. This funding has led to large shifts in collaboration among area local CBOs serving diverse communities and other health initiatives.

Dr. Diaz has extensive experience as an evaluator, including teaching program evaluation at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. In addition to serving as the principal investigator of various community based programs (responsible for the evaluation of the programs), she has also served as an evaluation consultant to local health systems since 2005 (Dignity Health, Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente). Dr. Diaz has provided many special trainings and workshops on evaluation for agencies working with diverse communities. In 2013, she served as a presenter/trainer to the UC Davis Center for Reducing Health Disparities providing a presentation on program evaluation to CBOs working with Latino communities. In addition, Merced County Department of Public Health, Sutter Health System and various local CBOs have participated in evaluation training under her direction. Current projects include working with the Sutter Health System Regional office of Northern California to assist in the development of a training module for all Community Benefit staff on the evaluation of community based implementation plans. In June 2015, Dr. Diaz served as a special evaluation consultant to the California Department of Public Health on the evaluation of the Teen Dating Violence Pilot Project assisting with the final analysis and presentation of a mixed methods evaluation approach using case study analysis. Currently, she serves as an evaluation consultant on the Technical Assistance Team from the Center for Reducing Health Disparities, as a part of the California Reducing Disparities Project.