Member Details -Deborah L. Rugg

Deborah L. Rugg has over 32 years of professional international and national evaluation experience and has led international evaluation standards-setting bodies such as the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG), where she served as Chair from 2012 -2015, and the HIV/AIDS Monitoring and Evaluation Reference Group (MERG) where she served as Chair from 2006-2011.

From August 2011-March 2015, Dr. Rugg has served as the Director of Inspection and Evaluation Division (IED) in the Office of Inspection and Oversight Services (OIOS), United Nations Secretariat in New York City. Prior to this, she served as Chief of the Monitoring and Evaluation Division at the Joint UN Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) in Geneva, Switzerland. Prior to joining UNAIDS in 2005, Dr. Rugg was the Associate Director for Monitoring and Evaluation for the Global AIDS Program (GAP) of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA from 2000-2005. While in Atlanta she also served as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Emory University School of Public Health. Prior to that she was Assistant Professor of Health Psychology at the University of California- San Francisco School of Medicine and then San Diego State University School of Public Health from 1982-1987. She joined the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) in 1987 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer in the Division of HIV/STD Prevention.

She has authored or co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and numerous major agency reports and normative guidances, primarily on evaluation methods and standards in general and in relation to HIV and adolescents, risk groups, and HIV counseling and testing. From 2009-2013, Dr. Rugg served on the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee to Evaluate the Impact of the US Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). She also served on the US National Research Council Panel on Data and Research Priorities for Arresting AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in physiological psychology and earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine in Health/Medical Psychology in 1982. She currently lives in New York City and has two daughters living in San Francisco, California.