Miriam Y. Vega

Miriam Vega, PhD is the Chief Executive Officer of the Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center, Inc. An experienced executive of non-profit organizations, including Federally Qualified Health Centers and AIDS service organizations, Dr. Vega created the CHANGE model of capacity-building assistance which helps to build culturally-responsive programming, quality improvement and organizational infrastructure at community-based organizations across the Nation.

Before coming to Addabbo, Dr. Vega most recently served as the Executive Vice President of Total Health Care, a large FQHC in Baltimore, MD. She has also held the position of Chief Operations Officer at Kedren Community Health Center in Los Angeles, CA where her focus was the full integration of mental health and primary care services. Prior to that, Dr. Vega served as the Chief Executive Officer of the University Muslim Medical Association (UMMA) Community Clinic in south Los Angeles, the Executive Director of the AIDS Project of the East Bay and the Vice President of the Latino Commission on AIDS where she founded the Institute for Hispanic Health Equity.

Dr. Vega received her BA in Psychology from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY and earned her doctoral degree in Social Psychology from the University of California, Berkley. She completed her post-doctoral fellowship at both SUNY Downstate Medical (the first HIV/AIDS clinic in NYS) and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

At the United Nations, Dr. Vega served as Secretary of the Psychology Coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and as the United Nations’ main representative of the ECOSOC-accredited Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She is currently a HOPE fellow and chair of American Public Health Association’s PHA’s Committee on Health Equity.

Dr. Vega maintains an active line of research focusing on issues of identity, stigma, culture, social marketing and social media. She recently co-authored a book chapter on the role of psychology in global health equity and she has presented her Twitter and HIV stigma research at various national and international conferences.