Member Insight

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? In Brazil, the health system is majority public and good. I thought that started when my mom was elected as a Chair of the Health Community Board of our neighborhood. From that, my mother began to participate in the decisions about the health system for our neighborhood, vaccination, health care for the elderly, etc. Thus, it sparked a flame to study epidemiology to understand our Society. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? Ow, this is a tricky question. In general, the probability of starting another pandemic. However, in my research area city environment is not prepared to stimulate active commuting, e.g., walking and cycling, and we have to improve these behaviors in our cities. On the other hand, here in the US, the health system should be public and paid for by the government, such as in Brazil, the UK, and other countries. Do you have any pets? Yes, I have 3 Border Collies. Duke, The Big Brother, 6 years old. Indy, The Bossy Sister (I rescued her in the middle of the 1 st pandemic year) 8 years old; and Tica, The […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? I was unfamiliar with epidemiology or any public health until after I completed my undergraduate degree. I didn’t know anyone with a career in those fields. I was working in a microbiology lab and we were trying to understand why a certain strain of Campylobacter had become ubiquitous in our sheep abortion samples (Campylobacter can cause sheep abortions).  We had sequenced the genome and its sequence wasn’t particularly different from our lab strain. I kept asking my boss about what we knew about the sheep farms, the conditions of the sheep pens, and where the sheep had come from, and he kept telling me, “We don’t study that; that’s an epidemiology question”, and I thought that might be what I should study. At a conference, I made sure to attend talks given by researchers in public health and epidemiology and was fascinated by their work. This inspired me to pursue an MPH and then a PhD in Epidemiology. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? Over the past two years, we’ve been thrust into the spotlight and heavily criticized regarding recommended responses to the […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? -I was headed towards a bench science career in Environmental Health Sciences. Somehow I started dabbling with regression techniques for exposure assessment, and found that I enjoyed it quite a bit. I took it entirely too far, so I didn’t have much of a choice: I had to become an epidemiologist. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? -For academic epidemiologists, probably funding opportunities. It seems to get tighter every year, and there are many more players on the field. It’s great to have so many people in epidemiology, but NIH’s funding structure needs some dramatic reconsideration to support them. Do you have any pets? -No, and I hope to keep it that way, despite my childrens’ request for a cat. Why did you join SER? What keeps you coming back? -It’s nice to stay in touch with fellow researchers, especially colleagues who I trained with. There’s also always something new to learn, and SER and the annual conference are a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of the field. What advice do you give students who want to become epidemiologists? […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? Ever since I was a little kid, I have always been interested in the “why” behind things and still often find myself falling down a rabbit hole of articles and videos when something sparks my curiosity. The opportunity to continue following my curiosity while simultaneously working towards improving population health, or being a “disease detective,” seemed like the perfect path for me. In full transparency, this wasn’t something I always knew I wanted to do with my life. In fact, the field of epidemiology wasn’t something I knew much about until I was finishing college. My major was biology and I had a strong interest in medicine but didn’t see myself as a physician. I spent some time in wet labs but was missing the translational component that bridged research and health. After some very vigorous Google searching, I stumbled on job postings for epidemiologist positions and felt this was something I could see myself doing long term. As they say, “the rest is history.” I applied to graduate programs the next day. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? The Covid-19 pandemic has […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? During college, I was interested in science and medicine but always focused on curiosities such as why people ended up in the hospital rather than how to treat them. A professor of mine mentioned epidemiology to me after a discussion, a term I was unfamiliar with, and I decided to investigate. After college, I took an Intro to Epi course, non-matriculated, and was hooked. After graduating with my MPH in 2009, I became the HIV/STD epidemiologist at a state health department until 2017 when I decided I wanted to do research and pursue my PhD. I am truly grateful I found this field. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed several challenges very clearly. First, I believe that science communication must become an integral part of our training. Effectively communicating risk, research findings (e.g., what can the model tell us), and causal effects, to name a few, are more important than ever. Secondly, I feel that academia, government, and private industry must continue to increase collaboration, especially at a local level. COVID has placed a spotlight on the lack […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? I read “Infections and Inequalities” by Paul Farmer my third year in college. I had thought that perhaps I wanted to be a doctor because I enjoyed science and wanted to do something “useful” in the world, but I was also studying international affairs because I was curious about political philosophy and its impact on people’s lives. Before I read that book, I naively thought that these were separate interests.  Afterwards, training to become a medical doctor who treated individual patients seemed woefully inadequate to tackle injustice on such a broad scale, and working in international affairs seemed too abstract to make a difference. Plus, I had this idea that being an epidemiologist meant a lot of trekking through the jungle looking for diseases, which sounded great. That idea persisted until nearly the end of my first year of grad school, when I was sitting in Charlie Poole’s class and realized that a lot of epidemiology is like solving a big puzzle, often with the help of computer code or working out math problems on the back of a napkin. Luckily, that part is fun too.   What do you see as […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? It was when I was finishing up my master’s thesis in psychiatric genetics, I was analyzing the data I had collected on the relationship between genes implicated in the stress response and anxious behavior in vervet monkeys, and I recognized the need and importance of study design and analytical methods that can allow to go further in comprehensively assessing variability in generic factors and behavioral outcomes and the interplay between genetic and environmental factors in influencing behavior. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? In my opinion the biggest challenge is that we are, now more than ever facing, the “big questions” and the “big picture”. It is crucial that we find ways to go deeper in the big questions (for example, how do social factors actually affect health (not just a relationship but getting at delineating the complex social and biological mechanisms in different populations and contexts), how does stress affect every health outcome? How to integrate preventive measures?), and how can we translate such knowledge into policy and change. Do you have any pets? I love animals, but I currently don’t have a […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist?

In college I was an international relations major. In thinking about how to spur economic development in low and middle income countries, it became clear that a healthy population was a precursor to any economic development. So I started looking into public health programs. At the time not every school had a global health program (it was the mid-90’s). The University of Michigan did and it was housed in the epidemiology department, so I sort of fell into it by accident. And I am glad I did! And the funny thing is, I haven’t done any global health work in over 20 years.

What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years?

A big concern for public health as a whole is public trust. It has been really disturbing to see how the COVID pandemic has eroded the public’s trust in previously trustworthy institutions. It will take a while to build it back. And even then we won’t reach the whole population. The segment of the population that has alternative beliefs will make it harder to protect population health.