Public Health Officer

Headshot of Sayone Thihalolipavan

Dr. Sayone Thihalolipavan, MD, MPH

Public Health Services
Health and Human Services Agency
County of San Diego

Dr. Sayone Thihalolipavan is a board-certified physician in Public Health and Preventive Medicine with a distinguished public health career that started in New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene as the Medical Director of Tobacco Control and Chronic Disease Prevention. He joined the County of San Diego’s Health and Human Services Agency 10 years ago as the County’s Deputy Public Health Officer in Public Health Services. 

Most recently Dr. Thihalolipavan worked as a Public Health Medical Officer within the Medical Care Services Department where he led HHSA’s justice-involved health efforts. He has served as a liaison with health and justice partners to improve care coordination for individuals before, at and after incarceration as well as collaborating with community, justice and other partners on various initiatives to prevent and reduce incarceration. He has helped lead the countywide Street Medicine Initiative, bringing together lived experience voices, community street medicine providers, and Medi-Cal Managed Care plans to collaborate on how to expand the capacity of street medicine in San Diego County. He also supports the County’s response to the Tijuana River Valley transboundary sewage and pollution crisis. 

 

Community engagement is a key focus for Dr. Thihalolipavan. His efforts include focusing on a collective impact approach that brings stakeholders together to serve historically disenfranchised communities and populations.  

   

Dr. Thihalolipavan has played a pivotal role in multiple County public health responses. These include the Covid-19 pandemic, Hepatitis A, meningococcal, Zika, and opioid epidemic among others. During the pandemic, he drafted and reviewed health alerts, public communications and health orders. He also led a team of medical experts to communicate with various communities and stakeholders.   

 

Recently, he worked with the Medical Examiner, P ublic Health Services , and others to conceptualize the idea of overdose fatality reviews, which was sponsored and passed as legislation (AB 2871) in California’s last legislative cycle . In 2021, he served as the Interim Tuberculosis Control and Refugee Health Medical Director while the position was being filled. He led the development of the County’s first naloxone distribution program in 2018 and continues to actively support collaborative efforts with health and safety partners to end the opioid epidemic as an executive committee member on the County’s Substance Use and Overdose Prevention Task Force. Additionally, in 2016 he oversaw the Emergency Medical Services Branch and helped transition it to Medical Care Services.    

   

Throughout his career, Dr. Thihalolipavan has cherished direct clinical time with patients. Efforts include helping NYC government employees quit smoking at the City’s government smoking cessation clinic, working in San Diego County’s sexual health clinic for a year, providing medical oversight and consultations to nurses at isolation hotels and at the Convention Center’s homeless shelter during the pandemic. For many years and through spring 2025 he would take occasional shifts as a tuberculosis clinic physician.  

 

In addition, he has supported public health at the broader level as a member of the California Medical Association (CMA) Council on Science and Public Health until terming out and as a CMA Delegate or Alternate Delegate for the Government-employed Physician Section.   

   

While working at the New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, Dr. Thihalolipavan primarily served as Medical Director of the Clinical & Scientific Affairs Unit in the Bureau of Tobacco Control and Chronic Disease Prevention. Prior to that role, he worked on projects related to Vital Statistics, Lead Poisoning Prevention, Environmental Health and Tobacco Control, and the Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Use, Prevention, Care and Treatment.   

   

Dr. Thihalolipavan holds a Master’s in Public Health from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and a Medical Degree from New York University School of Medicine. He has been recognized with numerous awards, including the San Diego County Top Doctors award in 2022 and the Kresge Foundation Emerging Leaders in Public Health award in 2018, and has led or contributed to various peer-reviewed publications.  

   

His five Gallup strengths are Belief, Achiever, Arranger, Includer, and Strategic.