Cristina Rabadan-Diehl

Dr. Cristina Rabadán-Diehl is a multidisciplinary scientist with over 30 years of experience working in Academia, Government and the Private Sector. She spent 21 years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an intramural scientist and health program administrator, where she managed a $150M portfolio of research and training programs, and directed the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Office of Global Health. During her tenure at the NIH, she was the Hispanic spokesperson for several campaigns and prevention programs and worked with Offices of Communications on outreach efforts to Hispanic communities and organizations.

She has worked with international multilateral organizations (World Health Organization, Pan American Health Organization, G20) on health policy issues representing the United States of America in her role as the Director of the Western Hemisphere at the Health and Human Services, Office of Global Affairs in the Office of the Secretary. During the four years she held that position, Dr. Rabadán-Diehl played key roles in advancing U.S. government health priorities around the world by levering her technical and policy knowledge and interacting with many stakeholders including scientists and Ministers of Health. In that role, she was the Technical Advisor to the Department of Health and Human Service’s Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan during his participation at the World Health Organization’s High Level Non-Communicable Disease Commission.

Currently, she is an Associate Director at Westat, a Contracting Research Organization, and the Principal Investigator of a clinical trial sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.

From personal perspective, Dr. Rabadan-Diehl lost her 28-year-old son to an opioid overdose in June 2019, and since then she has been collaborating with the Addiction Policy Forum, a nationwide nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating addiction as a major health problem, and Shatterproof, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to reversing the addiction crisis in the United States. She is a member of S.O.U.L., an organization aiming to help parents cope with the loss of a child to Drug Overdose.

Dr. Rabadán-Diehl holds a Pharmacy Doctorate from the School of Pharmacy at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid, Spain), a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Miami (Miami, FL), and a Master’s in Public Health and a Certificate in Health Communications from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Heath (Baltimore, MD). She is an Adjunct Professor and the Director of the Global Health Diplomacy course at George Washington University.