Member Insight – Jessica Agnew-Blais
What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? I have always been interested in mental health, but more as a public health issue than from the perspective of a clinician, so psychiatric epidemiology was the perfect way to pursue this interest. I like thinking about how different factors influence our mental health and resilience across the life course, generations and social contexts, and epidemiology is a great way to look at this. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? I think the pandemic highlighted the challenge of distrust of science and the ease with which misinformation can spread and affect people’s behaviour. For example, the fact that there is measle outbreak in London, where I live, points to this issue. It’s quite discouraging and a huge challenge that epidemiologists and scientists more broadly will need to tackle. Do you have any pets? I have a 13-year old black Labrador named Higgy (full name Higgs Boson). Why did you join SER? What keeps you coming back? I joined originally SER when I was a student to attend the annual meeting. What keeps me coming back are all of the excellent resources available from […]