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Rachel H. Civen, MD;MPH

Medical Director
Community Health Services Los Angeles County Department of Public Health
Glendale, CA, United States

Dr. Rachel Civen has a public health career spanning 25 years in Communicable Disease Control. Her career started in tuberculosis epidemiology and control where she served as Tuberculosis Controller of Alameda County, California from 1996 through 1998. From 2000 to 2001, Dr. Civen completed a Preventive Medicine Residency with the California Department of Public Health, working in the Disease Surveillance Section within the Division of Communicable Diseases. Since the fall of 2001, she has worked for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LADPH) in communicable disease control. From 2001-2016, she worked as Medical Epidemiologist for the Tuberculosis Control Program and the Acute Communicable Disease Control Program (ACDC). As a Medical Epidemiologist, she was the surveillance lead for vector-borne diseases, neurological infections, invasive meningococcal disease, outbreaks in skilled nursing facilities and hepatitis. She also served as Co- Principal investigator for the Varicella Active Surveillance Project of Antelope Valley, California, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2006-2012. In late 2016, she became the Medical Director for the Community Health Field Services Program for North Los Angeles County. Dr. Civen has overseen clinical management and public health field investigation for tuberculosis cases, communicable disease case investigations, and outbreaks in skilled nursing and congregate living settings. Since start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she has coordinated with multiple LADPH programs to develop investigation and infection control protocols for outbreak investigations in congregate settings, worksites and schools. Dr. Civen provides leadership to the “boots on the ground” LADPH staff, including hundreds of public health nurses, public health investigators, environmental health specialists and public health physicians. Additionally, she works with the Data Science Team to review outbreak data and with epidemiologists to develop rapid assessment surveys to study vaccine hesitancy among workers from diverse racial/ethnic/ cultural backgrounds that work at outbreak sites across sectors. Dr. Civen received her Medical Degree from the Medical College of Georgia, completed her internal medicine residency at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, CA and infectious disease fellowship at the West Los Angeles and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center combined program in 1993. She is board certified in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Preventive Medicine.

I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.

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