George Ayala

Alameda County Public Health Department

Biographical Abstracts

George Ayala, Psy.D., is deputy director of the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD), where he oversees Community Health Services, Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, Family Health Services, and Public Health Nursing. ACPHD serves nearly 1.7 million residents through 21 locations, covering 14 cities and six unincorporated communities.

Over the past 30 years, Ayala has dedicated himself to promoting and protecting the health and human rights of disenfranchised communities worldwide. He is the former and founding executive director of MPact Global Action for Gay Men’s Health and Rights, an international advocacy and technical support network devoted to promoting sexual health and human rights worldwide.

A community and clinical psychologist by training, Ayala has facilitated several community-led participatory action research projects. His recent studies focus on the socio-structural predictors of health, HIV service access and utilization among gender-diverse gay and bisexual men, and the comparative advantages of community-led HIV responses.

He is the co-author of Breaking Barriers: Sexual and Gender Minority-led Advocacy to End AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. The book is part of the Advances in Community Psychology series published by Oxford University Press. Breaking Barriers recounts the implementation and outcomes of a demonstration project in which eight community organizations partnered to reduce barriers to HIV care for gay and bisexual men and transgender women in Burundi, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Jamaica, and Zimbabwe. The book also provides a case study in contemporary approaches to evaluating advocacy and human rights.

Areas of Expertise

• LGBTQ health and rights
• Public health
• HIV
• Latine health