Title(s): Lecturer
Department: Community and Behavioral Health
Office: N409 CPHB
Phone: (319) 467-1774

Tricia Kitzmann has spent most of her public health career as an ambitious public health professional who creates strategic alliances with community organization leaders to effectively align with and support public health initiatives. She has a passion for preventing highly infectious disease outbreaks, following infectious disease trends, and preparing for and responding to public health emergencies. She has built and retained high performance teams by hiring, developing, and motivating skilled professionals.

Before joining the College of Public Health as full-time faculty in 2023, Ms. Kitzmann worked extensively in the public health practice community throughout Iowa. From 2018 to 2021, she was the community health division manager for Linn County Public Health, where led Linn County’s COVID-19 response and served as co-unified commander and the department’s Incident Commander. She was actively involved with Linn County’s community health assessment, community health improvement plan, emergency preparedness planning, and infectious disease prevention and control measures.

From 2008 to 2018, Ms. Kitzmann was the deputy director of Johnson County Public Health, and served as interim director for one year. She ran the day-to-day operations of the department, overseeing many programs and specifically worked on public health preparedness planning and exercises and accreditation activities. She assisted with managing the $6 million budget. She also coordinated and facilitated the local multidisciplinary preparedness meetings in Johnson County, with representation from local hospitals, emergency management, school districts, the Board of Health, Board of Supervisors, and private and public industries.

From 2003 to 2008, Ms. Kitzmann worked as a regional epidemiologist with the Iowa Department of Public Health, now known as the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. She assisted 22 hospitals, 14 local public health agencies, and one city public health department to create, update, and review their local public health emergency preparedness plans.

Ms. Kitzmann has also worked as an adjunct instructor at the University of Northern Iowa, served on the Preparedness Advisory Council for the state of Iowa for 13 years, and was the President of the Iowa Public Health Association from 2014-2015. She chaired the Iowa Governor’s Conference on Public Health Planning Committee in 2017.