I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for President-Elect of the SER Student & Post-Doc Committee. I’m a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, where I’m completing dissertation research on community mobilization, alcohol use, and HIV risk in South Africa; my research interests overall are in social determinants of health, causal inference methods, and measurement. Being part of SER has been one of the highlights of my graduate studies. The annual meetings, with the chance to hear from giants in the field and emerging leaders alike, to meet up with fellow students and colleagues, and to share my own research with such a tremendous variety of interested researchers, have truly enriched my doctoral experience. I’ve left each meeting energized to return to my own research, and I hope other students and postdocs have the same experience with SER in years to come.
I was drawn to epidemiology by its breadth of focus and depth of skills required; SER epitomizes both in the range of topics and the unstinting attention to methodological detail that characterize members’ research. Since the start of 2015, I have served as a student member of the Publications Committee, with a particular focus on the social media initiative highlighting SER members’ papers in the American Journal of Epidemiology. This experience has underscored the wealth of expertise on public health topics within the Society, while also illustrating the difficulties in translating the nuances of epidemiology research to a broader public. If elected, I hope to continue the work of the SPC in creating opportunities for mentorship and education for students and post-docs and in addressing the challenge of advancing epidemiology towards consequentialist, but no less methodologically rigorous, research.
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