About

Dr. Tomás Aragón is an adjunct faculty member and Impact Fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, with a background that includes 29 years of service in governmental public health. He has held prominent roles such as State Public Health Officer and Director of the California Department of Public Health, as well as Health Officer and Director of the Population Health Division at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. In these positions, he exercised leadership and legal authority to protect health, promote well-being, and prevent disease and injury. As the director of CDPH, he led the largest state health department on its journey to becoming a learning, healing, and impactful organization. Dr. Aragón's work emphasizes transforming systems and policies towards a culture of healing and health for all people and the planet, supporting community-led solutions that promote mental, emotional, and social health. His research interests include leadership development, decision making under uncertainty, and improving organizational strategic decisions through Decision Intelligence 4 Health. He promotes the Julia language for scientific computing and blogs at TEAM Public Health.

Research topics

• Nursing
• Internal medicine
• Gerontology
• Virology
• Medicine
• Computer Science

Selected publications

• DNA damage/p53, innate immune, and unfolded protein responses are activated in primate liver after toxic, high-dose AAV-SMN1 delivery

  Molecular Therapy Advances · 2026-01-30 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Tomás Aragón (blog): Never say never: Why I moved from local to state public health

  2021-02-21

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Tomás Aragón (blog): You're about to make a terrible mistake! (book recs)

  2021-03-20

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• The Urgent Need for Public Health Preparedness Funding and Support

  American Journal of Public Health · 2021-02-10 · 5 citations

  editorialOpen access

  The Urgent Need for Public Health Preparedness Funding and Support Linda C. Degutis DrPH, MSN, Kimberley Shoaf DrPH, MPH, Tomás J. Aragón MD, DrPH, Christopher Atchison MPA, David Dyjack DrPH, Lisle Hites PhD, MS, MEd, Jonathan Links PhD, Debra Olson DNP, MPH, RN, Margaret Potter JD, MS, Jack Thompson MSW, and Bernard Turnock MD, MPH Affiliation Linda C. Degutis is with the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT. Kimberley Shoaf is with the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, Public Health Division, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Tomás J. Aragón is with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Population Health Division, San Francisco, CA. Christopher Atchison is with University of Iowa (Emeritus), Iowa City. David Dyjack is with the National Environmental Health Association, Denver, CO. Lisle Hites is with the Institute for Rural Health Research, College of Community Health Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Jonathan Links is with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD. Debra Olson is with the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health (Emeritus), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Margaret Potter is with the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. Jack Thompson is with the Department of Health Services (Emeritus), School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle. Bernard Turnock is with the Division of Community Health Sciences (Emeritus), School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago.CopyRightCorrespondence should be sent to Linda C. Degutis, 225 Mountain View St, Decatur, GA 30030 (e-mail: linda.degutis@yale.edu). Reprints can be ordered at http://www.ajph.org by clicking the "Reprints" link.CONTRIBUTORSThe authors contributed equally to this editorial. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2020.306068 Accepted: November 17, 2020 Published Online: February 10, 2021

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Lessons from Mass-Testing for COVID-19 in Long Term Care Facilities for the Elderly in San Francisco

  Clinical Infectious Diseases · 2021 · 19 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Medicine
  • Gerontology
  • Virology

  Coronavirus disease 2019 can cause significant mortality in the elderly in long-term care facilities (LTCF). We describe 4 LTCF outbreaks where mass testing identified a high proportion of asymptomatic infections (4%-41% in healthcare workers and 20%-75% in residents), indicating that symptom-based screening alone is insufficient for monitoring for COVID-19 transmission.

  Publisher

• Tomás Aragón (blog): Decision intelligence (Part 1)

  2021-03-13

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Tomás Aragón (blog): Embodying cultural humility

  2021-05-15

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Tomás Aragón (blog): Welcome! ¡Bienvenido!

  2021-02-18

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Tomás Aragón (blog): Congratulations UC Berkeley School of Public Health Class of 2021!

  2021-05-22

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Tomás Aragón (blog): The 7 principles for building trust

  2021-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Hyman Scott

  45 shared

• Juliet Stoltey

  California Department of Public Health

  45 shared

• Janice K. Louie

  San Francisco Department of Public Health

  45 shared

• Godfred Masinde

  San Francisco Department of Public Health

  41 shared

• Ejovwoke Ememu

  Communities In Schools of Orange County

  38 shared

• Michael C. Samuel

  Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living

  38 shared

• Stephanie Trammell

  University of Richmond

  38 shared

• Ernesto Criado-Hidalgo

  California Institute of Technology

  36 shared

Education

• Certification, Healthcare Strategic Decisions & Risk Management

  Stanford University

  2016

• DrPH, Division of Epidemiology

  University of California Berkeley School of Public Health

  2000

• MPH (Epidemiology)

  Harvard School of Public Health

  1988

• MD, MPH

  Harvard Medical School

  1988

• AB, Molecular Biology

  University of California Berkeley

  1983