Our Team

Jonathan Fuchs, MD, MPH is the Director of the Center for Learning & Innovation at the SFDPH and joint PI of SHARP. He is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF, and Co-Director of the NIAID-funded UCSF Bay Area CFAR Mentoring Program, which hosts the annual Mentoring the Mentors of Diversity workshop. After completing his MD degree at Rutgers University and his MPH degree at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, Dr. Fuchs completed internal medicine residency training at UCSF. As an investigator affiliated with the NIAID- and NIDA-funded HIV Vaccine and HIV Prevention Trials Networks (HVTN, HPTN) his research has focused on the evaluation of experimental preventive HIV vaccine candidates in early and late-stage testing, social and behavioral issues relevant to HIV vaccine trial implementation, the evaluation of STI interventions to prevent HIV acquisition, and the assessment of mobile health interventions to improve adherence to PrEP. As the Director of the HVTN Training and Education Committee, he led several early stage investigator (ESI) programs including the Research and Mentorship Program (RAMP) which aims to attract African American and Latino medical students to careers in HIV vaccine discovery through an eight to 16 week or year-long mentored research project and a Non-Human Primate (NHP) Early Stage Investigator Award which sought post-doctoral and junior faculty to conduct translational research intending to bridge the gap between HIV clinical and NHP science. Dr. Fuchs also worked in partnership with AVAC to create an online curriculum focused on stakeholder engagement in biomedical HIV prevention trials based on the Good Participatory Practice guidelines. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Fuchs led San Francisco’s hotel-based isolation and quarantine program for people experiencing homelessness, which offered a wide range of harm reduction services, COVID-19 testing, and a network of hyperlocal neighborhood vaccine sites. Throughout the COVID response, Dr. Fuchs mentored undergraduates from San Francisco State University as COVID vaccine ambassadors.

John A. Sauceda, PhD, MSc is Multiple Principal Investigator (MPI) of SHARP, Associate Professor in Residence, and a health psychologist in the Department of Medicine at UCSF. He also co-directs the UCSF Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Mentoring Program, the CFAR Scholars DEI Pathway Initiative, and is Co-Director of the Developmental Core at the NIMH-funded Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS). John’s primary line of research aims to understand and intervene on factors to address health disparities among Latinx communities and vulnerable communities impacted by HIV. He is MPI of two clinical trials testing multiple component interventions to support viral suppression among people who inject drugs in Mexico and an economic empowerment intervention for adolescents living with HIV in Uganda. He also has a second line of research to conduct social and behavioral science research to help address some unresolved challenges in HIV cure research, such as promoting consent understanding, measuring psychological experiences of participants going through risky HIV cure trials, and understanding the perspectives, priorities and concerns of people living with HIV who may be interested in participating in HIV cure research.

Berta Hernandez, PhD is People Development Manager at the Center for Learning & Innovation with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Berta Hernandez arrived in San Francisco as an undocumented worker from Mexico City in 1987 and began her journey in Community Health Education as a Promotora in the SF Mission District, precisely during the pick of the AIDS Epidemic. After regularizing her immigration status, Berta began working at different community organizations in the Bay Area, such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Instiuto Familiar de la Raza in San Francisco, and La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland, among others. Berta also worked as a Program Manager of an international editorial company in Buenos Aires, overseeing the production of print, media and web publications and courses for Latin American MDs. She has an extensive training in Popular Education and Theater of the Oppressed and she is a literary artist, a storyteller, and a traditional healer practitioner, that has utilized theater as an educational instrument and healing medium in Mexico, US and Argentina since her teenage years. Berta has also been an advocate for AIDS awareness, HIV prevention, sexual health education, LGBTQ, immigrant, children, youth and women rights, and for racial, social and environmental justice during all her adult life. She holds a BA in Hispanic Language and Literature from the UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico,) a MA in Spanish and Latin American Literature from SFSU (San Francisco State University) and a PhD in Education from the UB (Universidad de Buenos Aires). Berta joins the CLI as its People’s Development Manager, after a year of intense COVID response work including the implementation of DPH Neighborhood Vaccination Sites.

Aira Villareal is Training Communications Coordinator with the Center of Learning & Innovation at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She is a Filipina immigrant, her family settled in Los Angeles in 2004, and she then moved to San Francisco in 2015. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Health Education with an emphasis in community health from San Francisco State University. For the past 3 years, Aira served as Program Administrator for CavityFree SF, a city-wide oral heath collaborative addressing children’s oral health disparities. She provided operational backbone support to keep the collaborative organized and coordinated projects in partnership with local CBOs and city agencies. In the past, she interned with Kaiser Permanente’s Health Education Department and served as an AmeriCorps member with SFUSD. In her free time, she enjoys line-dancing and tending to her plants.