Walt Senterfitt is an epidemiologist living and working in Los Angeles. He is currently administers an Institutional Review Board and serves as the Compliance Officer for the protection of the rights of human subjects in research at the Los Angeles County Health Department. Walt has specialized in HIV prevention epidemiology since completing his graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts and UCLA schools of public health.

From 2000 through 2002, he served as a Visiting Scientist at the CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention in charge of coordinating demonstration projects of HIV prevention interventions with HIV positive people. His special focus as a public health official has been to increase the active collaboration of researchers and policy makers with the community constituencies that are the “targets” and intended beneficiaries of the research and policy.

Walt is a gay man living with AIDS. After coming out as gay in 1972, he led in helping to organize an infrastructure for the nascent gay and lesbian community in Washington, DC, including founding what is now the Whitman-Walker Clinic. He was active in the Southern civil rights movement in the 60’s while an undergraduate and was on the staff of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.