Her research interests include health management, employment, and end of life care. Prior to her work at COPPER, she was a member of the Global Health Leadership Initiative (GHLI) team and conducted qualitative and quantitative data analysis of nationally representative and local projects in countries including Ghana, Ethiopia and China. She received an MPH from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, School of Public Health, and a B.A. from Pennsylvania State University.
Course name and brief explanation about it:
CDE 540E, Principles of Epidemiology II
This is an intermediate-level class that expands upon the fundamentals learned in Epi I. In Epi II we get the chance to delve into more complicated study designs and analysis techniques. We critically evaluate epidemiologic research and learn how to draw appropriate inferences from epidemiologic data.
Please note that the course is offered in the hybrid Executive MPH program.
What drives you in the work that you do? What are you passionate about?
In both research and teaching I have always savored those “Aha!” moments. When running an analysis, it is always exciting to identify relationships and try to understand why they exist. I love that we can track and see how each individual project is moving the needle in terms of understanding a field of research and helping us to turn understanding of associations into implementation of interventions into improvements in health. It can be a slow process, but each iterative step leads towards the greater goal -- improving public health.
Teaching is also an exciting part of my work. I’ve found statistics to be a powerful tool for conveying a public health message, and when students learn the power of numbers it’s like sharing a fun hobby. It is empowering to see when someone first understands what a relative risk is showing or how to run a multivariable linear regression model. I’m always impressed by how much students develop and grow over the course of the semester. Tasks that seemed scary and overwhelming on Day 1 are part of their research tool kit by the end of the semester. Seeing people learn, and learn to love epidemiology, never gets boring.
Why did you choose a career in public health?
As an undergraduate I took a demography class and found the idea of classification fascinating, but I was particularly interested in aging and health factors even more than migration and birth patterns. I realized that within the realm of public health there was the potential to impact on a population level rather than being restricted to one-on-one interactions. Communities exist within a dynamic network and this interplay has always fascinated me, not only because of the potential for larger-scale impact for improving health but also because when working in public health we are forced to work within real world systems and must handle all the challenges that exist within the complicated interplay of social determinants of health. Public health forces us to think about all the factors that affect health at both the macro and micro level and to give due diligence to understanding how to measure and leverage these factors to the benefit of the overall population. It involves constantly asking questions, learning from those questions, and refining the questions—a never-ending puzzle!
What is the most significant challenge facing your field of study today?
Effective communication of evidenced-based knowledge is essential, and recent times have shown us challenges that develop when the message is not clearly articulated. The basic concepts we learn in Epi I and Epi II allow us to be critical consumers of health knowledge. At the same time, our training in public health means that we are charged with ensuring the proper dissemination of this research information. Understanding generalizability, study design factors, definitions of exposures, and outcomes all help us determine the quality and limitations of research. These skills can help us inform others about conclusions from ongoing and previous research. We also must be critical with the limitations of what research shows and where evidence ends, and speculation begins. Learning to convey the message clearly and accurately will help ensure that the overall population has the best knowledge base to make health decisions.