Director, Division of Public Health Services
Chicago Department of Public Health
Dr. Irina Tabidze serves as the Director of the Division of Public Health Services within the Bureau of Syndemic Infectious Diseases (SID) at the Chicago Department of Public Health. She oversees HIV/STI/Viral Hepatitis and mpox Surveillance, Public Health Interventions, Epidemiology Research and Evaluation teams. She led the development and implementation of a new web-based surveillance/case management system and data integration projects for the SID Bureau
Dr. Tabidze’s focus and interests are in STI/HIV, (including perinatal infections) surveillance, research, and prevention, and serves as a Principal Investigator on numerous grants funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She serves as an Adjust Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health and mentored over 30 master and doctoral level students, including Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officers. She published numerous peer-reviewed articles in prominent journals, including JAMA, JID, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Clinical Infectious Diseases, and MMWR and serves as a peer reviewer.
Dr. Tabidze trained clinically as a reproductive gynecologist and completed a full-time residency program at the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center, Zhordania Institute of Human Reproduction, in Tbilisi, Georgia. She subsequently trained in clinical, immunological, and epidemiological aspects of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis, HIV, and herpes simplex viruses at the Division of Infectious Diseases, Epidemiology, and Immunology in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and obtained a master’s in public health degree in epidemiology/maternal/child health at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).