Member Insight

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? After finishing medical school in Mexico, graduates have to volunteer for a year as a general practitioner to give back to the community. We call this the medicine social service. I did my medicine social service in the infectious disease department at the Nuevo Leon State University Hospital when the H1N1 flu pandemic hit Mexico. During this time, a professor of infectious disease was the only epidemiologist working at that hospital, so she drafted me into the epidemiology department to help with outbreak investigations, collecting data from patients sick with H1N1, and attending meetings to decide protocols for triage and infection control. It was this experience that sparked my interest in epidemiology as a potential career path.   What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? I can think of two obstacles. I am not sure if they are big or not but these are things I have been thinking about recently. The first one relates to the scientific discipline as a whole and that is communication. In the past year and a half, we have seen more public health professionals and epidemiologists in the […]

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? I read Modern Epidemiology (second edition, ME2) while doing a master’s degree in health services and was immediately captivated by the rigor and relevance of the field. As soon as I got my copy of ME2, I unintentionally consumed the entire book within a week. It was clear to me that epidemiology was central to public health and medicine. As a physician trained in multiple public health specialties, I was also naturally be drawn to epidemiology. I am forever thankful to Bert Hofman (Erasmus, Harvard) for recommending ME2 and Sander Greenland (UCLA) for his encouraging responses to my emails when I was a student. Reading Jamie Robins and learning from Ken Rothman sealed the deal. A couple of years on, epidemiology had introduced me to Judea Pearl’s Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference which I then proceeded to devour over two weeks during a trip to Texas. Again, unintentionally. I’ve never been the same after these two books.   What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? The biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists is reimaging the path forward for epidemiology and its role in the health sciences […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? I never knew what epidemiology was before taking my first epidemiology course as an undergraduate. This course sparked my interest in the field because it gave me a glimpse into the multifaceted nature of epidemiology. I remember learning about the applications of epidemiology in a range of topics—everything from incarcerated populations to cancer to health equity. I was hooked and knew that the medical school plans that I had once thought were for me would soon be very placed. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? There has been a lot of literature, especially lately, on structural social determinants of health (e.g., access to healthy foods, recreational and health care facilities, etc). Nevertheless, there has been less strides in interventions for reducing disparities in structural social determinants of health. I believe one of the biggest obstacles facing our field in the next five years is moving from the vast evidence base to developing and implementing effective interventions to create equitable access to structural resources. Leveraging and learning from studies of the impact of structural determinants on different health outcomes will be key. Do you […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? I was first introduced to infectious disease epidemiology through my microbiology undergraduate courses. I quickly realized this was the right fit for me academically and professionally. I recall during my first semester in graduate school, that this was more than just a career, it was a vocation. I have not regretted my decision once. Along the way, I have learned from many brilliant instructors and mentors, and I am fortunate to work alongside a wonderful cohort of applied epidemiologists.  What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? Our field has certainly experienced the spotlight and the accompanying growing pains in the midst of the pandemic. One major accomplishment that many in our field have collectively advocated for is equitable health – in research and the community. One of the biggest obstacles going forward will be to sustain the importance of having an equitable lens with those outside our field, whether it be for supporting epidemiology research or public health policy. Do you have any pets? I love animals and currently have one #EpiCat, a Siamese named Claire adopted from the Humane Society. Why did you […]

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.

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist?

I gravitated towards science as an undergraduate because I enjoyed devising studies to test my ideas about how the natural world worked. However, I found that doing biological research did not connect as closely as I would have liked to the topics that were most important to me. I grew up in Baltimore, a city facing severe problems with racial segregation, poverty, violence, and substance use. I was motivated to better understand how Baltimore and many other US cities had developed into these sorts of situations, and how these conditions were impacting the people who lived there. During my senior year, to satisfy a statistics requirement for my biology major, my advisor Anne Fausto-Sterling recommended that I take something called “epidemiology”. I truly had no idea what it was. Sally Zierler taught the introductory epidemiology course at Brown at that time, and many of the example studies in the course related to social determinants of health. This was an eye-opening experience because it revealed that the scientific method that had drawn me to biology could be applied to the social issues that I was motivated to better understand. I quickly shifted from marine biology and oceanography to epidemiology and public health when planning for next steps after graduation. That is how I ended up on the path to epidemiology.