Biography

Dr Karin Hatzold, MD, MPH is a public health physician and global health leader with more than 25 years of experience in HIV prevention, testing and treatment, infectious diseases, implementation research, and health systems strengthening across sub-Saharan Africa. She currently serves as Global Infectious Diseases Lead at Population Services International (PSI), providing strategic leadership across HIV, tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and differentiated prevention and treatment delivery.

Since 2004 Karin Hatzold has held progressively senior leadership roles at Population Services International across global and country portfolios spanning HIV prevention and treatment, HIV self-testing, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, reproductive health integration, and implementation science.

Her work has centered on introduction and scale up of innovative products and delivery models, policy engagement, market shaping, evidence generation, and operational leadership in high burden African settings. She is internationally recognized for pioneering work on HIV self-testing through the STAR project, which generated the evidence, market-shaping approaches and implementation experience that helped establish HIV self-testing as a global public health intervention and contributed to its adoption in more than 114 countries and differentiated HIV prevention and care service delivery.

She currently leads PSI’s Lenacapavir Early Adopter Initiative, supporting Ministries of Health across nine African countries to introduce and scale long-acting injectable PrEP, including policy and regulatory readiness, service-delivery models, implementation research, monitoring and cross-country learning. Her current portfolio also includes integrated molecular STI diagnostics, long-acting treatment for opioid dependence, and digital and AI-enabled approaches to HIV prevention and service delivery.

Dr Hatzold has contributed to WHO guideline development groups and technical working groups, including those on HIV testing, HIV self-testing, hepatitis C self-testing and long-acting PrEP, and served as Co-Chair of the WHO Hepatitis C Self-Testing Guideline Development Group. She holds an MD from the University of Mainz and an MPH from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.