Member Insight

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.

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.

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? The research work of Professor Dr. Miguel Hernán. How long have you been a member of SER?  Since 2017. What role do you have in SER? I am a member of the SER Membership and Nominations Committee, co-chaired by Erin A. Bowles and Whitney Robinson.  I am also the lead of the Subcommittee – Masters and Non-academia. Why did you join SER? What keeps you coming back? I was looking for a professional society in Epidemiology, and was told by colleagues that SER was the premier society for Epidemiologic Research.  They were correct! Initially, I was excited to take full advantage of the membership resources.  I watched every single Causal Inference/Methods webinar taught by the experts, and kept notebooks just for this purpose.  It was wonderful to be able to add to my knowledge base, as a benefit of my membership.  I am confident that I sent quite a few emails to Courtney Long thanking her after every webinar! Attending the annual meeting in 2019 was so worthwhile.  I drank several cups of coffee a day there so as not to miss one of the great Methods workshops/sessions.  The most challenging part […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? I was a junior at Harvey Mudd College and Dr. Sally Blower came and gave a school-wide lecture about her work mathematically modeling HIV in South Africa. It was the first moment I understood that I could use my mathematics degree to contribute to improving people’s health. I emailed her and she suggested I look into programs in epidemiology for graduate school. What do you see as the biggest obstacle facing epidemiologists in the next five years? I think that epidemiologists will have to deal with structural determinants of health in meaningful and intentional ways. While, I think, the discipline has been documenting the impact of various social determinants of health there is more work to be done in developing tools, methods, and interventions that directly address structural health determinants. I also think this will be made easier if we have a more diverse group of epidemiologists thinking and working through these issues. Do you have any pets? I don’t have any pets, but I do have many houseplants that I care about deeply! I’ve even named some of them! Why did you join SER? What keeps you coming back? I joined […]

What sparked your decision to become an epidemiologist? When I was a kid growing up in the poorest neighborhoods of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, it was always on my mind and heart that I wanted to do something to help people in need. For some reason, the idea to help was related to the health or the well-being of people in need. Then, my parents moved my brothers and I to El Paso, TX, and my science courses in high school and college helped me confirm the possibility that I could actually make this difference in people’s lives related to their health. However, when I was in college I spent several days by myself in the lab sacrificing rats for my thesis project, and I told my thesis advisor that I realized that I was not very excited about laboratory work. I was more interested in doing something more specific for the benefit of people. She asked me if I had heard about epidemiology. I replied no and asked what it was. She recommended to look for it on the internet and I did. Everything I read about it was a perfect fit for me. Many years passed after that initial […]