Stephen A. Klotz, MD

Stephen Klotz, MD, led the University of Arizona Division of Infectious Diseases since 2008 to 2016, first as interim chief when Eskild A. Petersen, MD, retired, and then as chief when he was appointed to the post in 2009. The Petersen Clinics at Banner – UMC Tucson, funded by a $1.5-million-a-year U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant to the UA under the federal Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, are named for Dr. Petersen, who came to the UA in 1974. Dr. Klotz is the principal investigator on the grant. He was succeeded as division chief in April 2016 by Elizabeth Connick, MD. Dr. Klotz joined the UA faculty in 2000, coming from the University of Kansas where he had been associate chief of staff for research and development and AIDS Clinic director at the Kansas City VA Medical Center. He previously had served at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Shreveport, La., and the Overton Brooks VA Medical Center there for six years. He also was a staff physician for the Indian Health Service on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation, Mescalero, N.M., in the mid-1970s. Among UA College of Medicine – Tucson roles he has held are Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program director, medical director of the Arizona AIDS Education and Training Center (AETC), and principal investigator for the HRSA Ryan White Early Intervention Services Grant mentioned above, which includes research and patient care in the Petersen Clinics. The clinics serve nearly 1,400 patients and employ 15 people at the Banner – University Medical Center Tucson and South health care facilities. AETC provides physicians, dentists, nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and mental health workers with access to training from peer colleagues with expertise in the management and treatment of HIV disease. He’s proud that HIV care at the clinics was rated No. 3 in the nation in 2015 by the University HealthSystem Consortium. The division, under his tenure, also operated the Refugee Preventive Health Screening Program, which provides initial health screenings for about 1,200 foreign refugees, largely from Africa and Asia, who relocate to Southern Arizona each year through the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Arizona Department of Health Services. The screening clinics often serve as the first encounter refugees have with Western medicine. Afterward, many continue with Banner – UMC for their health care.