Kristal Aaron, DrPH, MSPH, BS

Kristal J. Aaron, DrPH, MSPH is a Clinical Data Manager II in the Division of Infectious Diseases (ID) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).  As an undergraduate she studied microbiology at Auburn University and afterword worked in industry and academia for 6 years prior to initiating her studies in public health.  While working as a full-time lab manager for the Division of Nephrology at UAB, Kristal completed her MSPH and DrPH in Healthcare Organization and Policy with an Outcomes Research concentration at UAB.  She joined the STD group of ID in 2016 and has been working collaboratively with the laboratory, faculty, and staff.  There, she directs the development of multi-site and multi-national database structures during the study planning phase which also involves the development of budgets and personnel requirements necessary to implement planned projects.  Dr. Aaron develops data management solutions for clinical research operations by managing multi-site data collection and is responsible for ensuring that the data collection and management meet the requirements of all sponsors, study sites, and the FDA.  She directs faculty and colleagues regarding the appropriate variables to include in data extracts in order to answer specific research questions and provides guidance on the presentation of data in a way that is interpretable for faculty and others; extracts data from large data sets to create data sub-sets and performs data analytics using SAS for publications and grant applications; and also works with the Alabama Department of Public Health to organize data extraction for scheduled reporting of notifiable infectious diseases.  In addition, Dr. Aaron joined the Southeast STD/HIV Prevention Training Center in 2021 as part of the evaluation team.