Introductions

Hello!

I'm Natalie Marzec and I am the Zoonotic Disease Unit Manager in the Communicable Diseases Branch at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. I've been with CDPHE in the Zoonotics Unit for a little over 5 years and I became the unit manager in the middle of all the COVID response shuffling. I'm also a physician trained in infectious disease and preventive medicine/public health.

My project is focused on reestablishing the relationships between Colorado's local public health agencies and CDPHE (post-COVID), gathering feedback from LPHAs on the pandemic response and how it could be improved for future pandemics as well as leading discussions on what communicable disease work in the state will look like going forward and planning how to train the current Colorado public health workforce.

I'm looking forward to getting to know you all! 

Hi everyone! My name is Lisa McHugh and I am the Assistant Bureau Director for the Bureau of Epidemiology in Pennsylvania. I have been in this role since August 2020 working as an operation’s co-lead for the COVID-19 response, managing the HAI and HIV programs, and assisting with various Bureau initiatives. Previous to this role, I worked in New Jersey for 18 years where I managed their infectious disease program and served as the Influenza and Viral Respiratory Disease Surveillance Coordinator. I am the co-chair of the CSTE Influenza and Viral Respiratory Diseases Subcommittee and have participated in a number of other CSTE working groups. I have an MPH and PhD in epidemiology and my career focus to date has been infectious disease. I accepted my new role in Pennsylvania to expand my scope and move closer to friends and family. I am looking forward to working with this group!

Hi All,

I'm very excited to join this group!

My name is Elizabeth Russo, and I lead the newly created Data Assessment Unit in the Immunization Division of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Since 2018, I have managed both the Data Assessment Unit and the newly spun-off Quality Assurance Unit, where a lot of Vaccines for Children program implementation and compliance evaluations are carried out.  My current unit includes epidemiologists and data analysts who fulfill data requests using immunization registry data (mostly COVID vaccine-related) and work with providers to improve data quality. We also administer the school immunization surveys across the state.  

I am trained as an internist; was an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer with the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases group at CDC (several reorgs ago); worked overseas and at the Boston Public Health Commission conducting program evaluations of safe water- and chronic disease-related interventions, respectively; and have had a smattering of other jobs that gave me experience developing health technology assessments, plain language content, and shared decision making tools. 

My goal with this group is to bring some strategic thinking to the data quality work we do related to the state's immunization registry.

Can't wait!

Hi everyone! 

In reading the previous intros, there are so many amazing people in this cohort! I am humbled and excited to be working with you all over the next year.

My name is Amelia Salmanson and I am the Viral Hepatitis Coordinator at the Utah Department of Health; I have been in and out of this role since 2017. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked as a hepatitis C disease intervention specialist (DIS) and patient navigator. At the start of the pandemic my role shifted to leading COVID-19 active monitoring, contact tracing, hot spot/outbreak response, and correctional setting subject matter expert in the State of Utah, however my passion is in hepatitis. I am an advocate for harm reduction and drug user health; working to test, educate, and support individuals with hepatitis C. As of August 21st, I returned back to the hepatitis world as the Viral Hepatitis Coordinator, but continue to work on COVID-19 response with our state prison system and am leading the ELC Detection and Mitigation of COVID-19 in Confinement Facilities grant. 

My project will be focusing on hepatitis C elimination planning in Utah, of which I am spearheading coordination, discussion, and planning with stakeholders. I hope to have a plan published by the end of the project period, but know that the conversation alone is something that has not yet occurred and will make a difference among stakeholders working in the areas of HCV prevention and treatment in Utah. I hope that this program helps me continue to improve my leadership and management skills to enhance my role leading teams and projects.

Additionally, since the start of the COVID-19 response I have witnessed champions in public health face the most challenging events, pressures, and hostility of their careers. But they continue to fight. These public health heroes are my “why.” I want to grow personally and professionally to be a public health champion in my career. In addition, I would like to strengthen my knowledge of politics in public health, as this is a critical piece to making true change in our communities.

In my free time, I enjoy hiking, skiing, cooking, and hanging out with my husband, Eric, and our kitties, Dexter & Wizzy :)

Hello!
I'm Laura Fox and am a Senior Epidemiologist with the Environmental Public Health Tracking Program (EPHT) in the Office of Environmental Health (OEH) at the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS). I lead several environmental health surveillance projects in OEH at ADHS, support other programs with data analysis, evaluation, and data visualizations like BRACE, EHC, and syndromic surveillance in my work, and currently lead a workgroup within the national Tracking Program to evaluate syndromic surveillance data and hospital discharge data. I've been in my current position within the Tracking Program for 2.5 years and prior to this position have 8 years experience working in foodborne illness surveillance at local and regional health departments in Texas. My project will involve bringing census tract level data to our public-facing dashboard, the Arizona EPHT Data Explorer, the first of it's kind for our agency and bring a long sought vision to reality for our program. My project will involve having discussions with data stewards, agency leadership, and informatics team on data sharing, data displays, and workflow and supporting transparency and other agency initiatives related to this project.

Reviewing all these introductions I am impressed with the expertise and work being accomplished and to be accomplished! I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you! 

Hello! 

My name is Sujata Joshi. I serve as a project director for a data project here at the Northwest Tribal Epidemiology Center, which is housed within the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB). NPAIHB serves the 43 federally recognized Tribes in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Since 1996, NPAIHB has housed one of the twelve Tribal Epidemiology Centers (TECs), which provide epidemiology and public health services to Tribal and urban Indian communities across the U.S. 

I currently lead a team that is focused on improving Northwest Tribes' access to accurate and actionable health data. A lot of our work is focused on linkages to address AI/AN misclassification, and reporting data to Tribes to inform public health activities. We serve as a resource for most things data within our organization, and engage with state and national partners on data and epidemiology-related topics that are important for our Tribes. Recently, I've been co-leading a few data modernization initiatives within the TEC, and am excited to see how these efforts allow us to provide better data and service to our member Tribes. 

I've now spent most of my public health career working in tribal epidemiology, and am continually humbled by the opportunities to learn from the Tribes we serve, and to work to promote Tribal sovereignty within a public health context. For my project, I'm interested in developing a data governance policy document/strategy for our organization. A lot of our data governance policies are either housed within specific projects and/or not documented in written form. I'm interested in linking these policies back to principles of tribal data sovereignty and protection of individuals and tribal communities, while also supporting our technical staff in making the most of our data assets. 

I'm very much looking forward to getting to know and learning from all of you in the coming year!

Hello everyone,

It’s really inspirational reading about all the projects and expertise in this group. I’m Dora Dumont, a senior public health epidemiologist at the RI Department of Health. I serve the immunization program but also handle epi for lead screening and PRAMS (small state, multiple hats). Before a year’s stint on the COVID unit handling nursing homes and prisons, I served as epi for chronic disease and worked with the medical director at the state prison system on multiple public health initiatives. My project aims to create cross-state analytic partnerships to advance the use of immunization registries for data-driven policy, but more generally I’m looking to build leadership skills that will improve my conversations with colleagues about how epi can most meaningfully respond to the social challenges of 2020 (e.g. how routine analyses can engage more with the social/structural drivers of inequities or other system failures). 

Hi Everyone! It's great to virtually meet you all and I am very much looking forward to getting to know everyone through this program! My name is Nicole Stone, and I am the Senior Enteric Epidemiologist with the Indiana Department of Health. I have been with the agency for 5 years and have some previous experience as a community outreach worker at a local health department. For my current position I manage a team of four epidemiologists and public health investigators as well as a team of interns who complete foodborne disease investigations across the state. My team focuses on routine case surveillance for foodborne and waterborne conditions as well as many, many outbreak response activities across the state. I have not been working directly on COVID since last year, but I was heavily involved at the beginning with lab approvals, investigations, and then initiated our statewide contact tracing program.

My project focus will be on expanding the capacity for assistance in routine infectious disease case investigations to support local health departments, particularly as COVID-19 continues to take up most of their time and resources. I also hope to formalize our training and resources for local health departments to be able to conduct routine infectious disease case surveillance and outbreak response activities.

I'm extremely honored to be working alongside everyone here and am looking forward to connecting with everyone. I look forward to learning from all of you! I live in Indianapolis in a historic neighborhood that is obsessed with Halloween (see here). I live with my husband, two cats, and our Corgi, Lenny. I love public health and being an infectious disease epi nerd!

Hi everyone, 

I'm inspired by reading all of your introductions and projects, and humbled to join you for the CSTE LEAD program. My name is Laura Newman, and I am a Senior Epidemiologist and Manager of the Washington State Department of Health's COVID-19 Outbreak Response in Non-healthcare Congregate Settings Program. Our program grew as an offshoot of our state's initial COVID-19 response and focuses on COVID-19 outbreak investigation, reporting, and guidance development in high-risk settings such as schools, agriculture, corrections, and maritime. My project is to build an evidence base to inform effective public health action measures to prevent and respond to COVID-19 outbreaks in K-12 public schools.

I have a MHS in Global Disease Epidemiology & Control and a PhD in Epidemiology. After seven years in academic research, I moved over to applied public health, where I've been working for the past six years. I started in Refugee Health and then pivoted again with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

I live in Seattle, Washington with my husband and two young boys: Ethan (6), who started kindergarten in August 2020 in a virtual setting which was very challenging, and Isaac (3).  We enjoy (short) hikes, going to the beach, and riding bikes. I am excited to learn from and with you all during CSTE LEAD!

Hi all - very good to meet you all!

I have both my MPH and PhD in epidemiology from Tulane University and over my ~20 year career, have experience spanning the public, private, and academic sectors.  My work has focused on public health surveillance, epidemiology research, and program evaluation, particularly related to chronic disease.  I have expertise in designing surveillance metrics, research projects, and conducting quantitative statistical analyses for investigations using administrative health care utilization data (including hospital billing and insurance membership/claims data), vital records, environmental data, and survey data, measuring the burden of chronic disease, high risk populations, quality of care, and program effectiveness. Additionally, I have taught multiple epidemiology courses for both undergraduate and MPH programs. Currently, I am the senior epidemiologist for the Division of Environmental Health at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).  

My project will involve developing a consolidated system (across three divisions at MDHHS) to respond to cancer data incidence requests, plus securing buy-in for it’s implementation from both internal and external partners. Under the current system at MDHHS, data requests for cancer incidence come from multiple sources, including community members/groups, physicians, internal site response coordinators, and local heath departments. We do not yet have an established, coordinated approach to responding to these requests, leveraging our program partners, and notifying stakeholders. 

This is a very accomplished group and I look forward to our learning from each other during CSTE LEAD!

Hello All - I am so humbled to be among such an experienced and dedicated group of epidemiologists! 

I have 7+ years of public health experience, primarily in the fields of maternal and reproductive health, family planning and immunization. I studied epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, UK.
I am currently the Vaccine Preventable Disease Epidemiologist at the Maine Center for Disease Control. Prior to this role, my public health work has been globally focused, and brought me to countries like Nigeria, India, Tanzania, Nepal and Madagascar, to name a few. It has been an extremely rewarding and challenging transition to domestic public health with many unsuspecting parallels. My passion for public health is driven by the pursuit for equity, representation, inclusion and improving health outcomes for marginalized communities. 

The project I have chosen to pursue for the CSTE LEAD program involves improving equity in hepatitis A prevention and surveillance in Maine, in response to a recent surge in person-to-person transmission of the virus and shifting risk factors. We will establish a hepatitis A working group to improve access and utilization of hepatitis A vaccine, streamline outbreak response, and increase demand for the vaccine among individuals with risk factors. 

I live in Maine with my husband and 3 year old son. Outside of work I enjoy running, Laser sailing, hiking, cooking, travel and pottery. 

Hello all!

It was a pleasure reading everyone's introductions, which increased my appreciation for being one of the person's chosen to be part of the 2022 CSTE LEAD program.

I received my MPH from The George Washington University, with a focus in Epidemiology, and a MS from Rutgers University where my research was focused on food safety. I have over 17 years of experience in scientific research, public health, and laboratory applications.  I have been working at the New Jersey Department of Health for the past 5 as an Epidemiologist working primarily on Hepatitis C. After the COVID-19 surge began in New Jersey I was the epidemiologist responsible for COVID-19 outbreak response and management in two large northern counties in New Jersey. 

For my project I hope to provide the first detailed Epidemiological profile document for Hepatitis C in New Jersey. The document will provide profiles and summaries which highlight the burden of Hepatitis C in New Jersey by populations, stratified by sociodemographic, geographic, and behavioral characteristics relative to to the general characteristics of the state. It is the hope that this document will serve to increase public and professional awareness and to assist in the development of policies towards viral hepatitis prevention, care, and planning in New Jersey to coincide with NJDOH's hepatitis C elimination efforts. The goal is to have the HCV epidemiological profile document completed and disseminated by the end of 2022.

I live in central New Jersey with my husband and two middle school-aged children. I enjoy walking outdoors, going to the beach, hanging out with friends and family, some theatre and family friendly concerts. 

I look forward to meeting and working with this wonderful team. 

Hi everyone! It's been so great to read your introductions and learn a little about you all!

I am a public health epidemiologist at Kent County Health Department in Grand Rapids, MI. My primary focus is opioid overdose, and I serve as the co-chair for the Kent County Opioid Task Force. Over the past 18+ months, I've also assisted in our local COVID-19 response and have managed much of our school and long-term care facility data. I've been at KCHD for 5 years, and prior to that, was a CSTE AEF Fellow (Class XII) at the Oklahoma State Department of Health in the Injury Prevention Service (also focused on drug overdose). I received my MPH in epidemiology from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. My project during CSTE LEAD will be the implementation and evaluation of an overdose fatality review in Kent County.

I spend my free time running, climbing, drinking coffee, and doing endless home renovations! Can't wait to get to know you all over the coming year!

Hello Everyone:

I appreciate all the things others have shared & already see a lot of potential connections (geography, subject matter, plans) & interesting jumping-off points.

I lead a team of evaluator-epidemiologists in the Overdose Prevention Section, Epidemiology & Response Division, at the New Mexico Department of Health. Since September, I'm also supervising an information dissemination coordinator. We work closely with (but are separate from) the Substance Use Epidemiology Section, so part of my focus for LEAD is promoting capacity building and collaboration among epidemiologists with different skill sets and job functions: surveillance, evaluation, dissemination. 

I've worked at NMDOH for almost 8 years, first in the Environmental Health Epi Bureau & since 2016 in Overdose Prevention (Injury & Behavioral Epi Bureau). Like others here, I was also doing COVID work in 2020-2021, initially as a case investigator and then for projects with CDC & the NM Public Education Department (incl. statewide survey of school mitigation practices). I just completed an evaluation of a statewide Overdose Fatality Review pilot and my team's working on a variety of projects related to our CDC funding (Overdose Data to Action).

I earned my MPH at Michigan State and did some work with the Ingham County Health Department & in the Upper Peninsula (LMAS District HD). I also hold a doctorate in the humanities---which means that I try to never underestimate the impact of history and culture. I grew up on the East Coast & originally visited NM in 2009-2012 for service trips to the national parks (Chaco Canyon). My husband's based in CO, so we spend a certain amount of time on the road between here & there, which fortunately is a beautiful drive (& there are great places to stop, stay & hike off US-285)!

Looking forward to getting to know everyone & working together in 2022 . . .

Hi all!

My name is Kelly Walblay and I am the Healthcare-associated Infections (HAI) Epidemiologist at the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH). I started working here in April 2019 and most of my work has focused on multidrug resistant organism and COVID-19 (since 2020) surveillance and outbreak response in healthcare settings (especially skilled nursing facilities). Prior to CDPH, I was a CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellow at the Illinois Department of Public Health in infectious disease. I received my MPH at the University of Michigan in 2017 and worked abroad in Nicaragua on a Zika virus cohort study.

In 2022, I will start a new position as the Senior Epidemiologist/Epidemiologist IV of the Healthcare Settings Unit at CDPH where I will supervise a team of epidemiologists that work on HAIs and COVID-19 in healthcare facilities across the spectrum of care (skilled nursing, acute care, outpatient, etc.). I am very much looking forward to learning from you all and the LEAD Program on how to be an effective supervisor and leader - it will be my first time formally supervising! My project for LEAD will focus on building a complete patient transfer network for Chicago that will help us prioritize facilities for infection prevention efforts.

In my free time, I love to stay active! I play soccer, volleyball and dance with a company. I also love to travel as much as I can and spend many weekends in Michigan on the lake. (I love Chicago but will always be a Michigander at heart). Looking forward to getting to know you all! 

Hello everyone,

 

My name is Leann Liu. It is great to virtually meet you all and I am so impressed by the expertise of this group! I cannot wait to work with you all in the coming year!

 

I was a Pediatrician in China and received my MS in Epidemiology from the University of Texas, School of Public Health. I have five years of clinical experience as a Pediatrician and fifteen years of experience in infectious and chronic disease surveillance, public health emergency response, and epidemiologic research. Currently, I serve as the Manager of the Surveillance and Epidemiology Unit in Harris County Public Health. In this role, I provide guidance to the epidemiologists of the unit in day-to-day surveillance activities and epidemiologic studies. I also assist the Chief Medical Epidemiologist and the Office Director with programmatic oversight, quality assurance, grant management, and personnel supervision. One of my responsibilities is to lead the epidemiologists to respond to emerging infectious diseases and public health emergencies. Examples include the West Nile virus outbreak in 2012 and 2014, Ebola response in 2014, Zika outbreak in 2016, Hurricane Harvey epidemiology surveillance and response in 2017, measles resurgence in 2018, the outbreak of lung injuries associated with an e-cigarette or vaping product use and Intercontinental Terminal Company chemical fire incident in 2019, and COVID-19 in 2020. I have served as a Primary Mentor for CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellowship and would like to contribute to other CSTE activities.  

 

My project is “Automation of Quality Review Utilizing Maven Data – An Informatics Approach for Quality Management”. Through this project, I would like to automate surveillance quality reports in the case management system (Maven), build a quality management (QM) team, and ultimately improve surveillance quality through the implementation of the new QM process. 

I am excited to join the LEAD’s peer network and look forward to learning from the experienced colleagues, improving my leadership skills, and supporting each other in epidemiology surveillance and public health!  

I live in Houston with my husband, son, and our lovely Braylen. We all enjoy going to boy scouts camps, especially Braylen :) 

Greetings. I am the Healthcare Associated Infections Program Manager for the Iowa Department of Public Health. This is a new position in the Department and I am the first to hold it. I have been on-board for just over a year but have prior public health experience at other agencies. 

Our HAI Program has doubled in size and much of my position involves managing people, the budget, and our long term projects/goals. 

I am looking forward to getting to know everyone. 

Hey everyone!

 

I am an Epidemiologist and the Data Visualization Coordinator for the Communicable and Environmental Diseases and Emergency Preparedness (CEDEP) division at the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH). My current focus is conducting Tableau trainings and creating visualization best practices for our division. 

 

Prior to coming to TDH, I received my MPH in Global Communicable Diseases at the University of South Florida and worked on the bench at the Florida Department of Health Bureau of Laboratories in Tampa, FL conducting sentinel surveillance of arboviruses. I moved to Nashville and started interning with TDH’s Foodborne program analyzing National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) data, specifically antimicrobial resistance trends of Campylobacter in retail meat. After my internship I became an Epidemiologist with the Healthcare-Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance program conducting Clostridioides difficile surveillance as part of the Emerging Infections Program. Like many of you, I was pulled into the COVID-19 pandemic response. I started answering calls in January 2019 then lead our clinician call line for a few months until I was tapped to lead the Data Visualization team. 

 

Besides data visualization, I am very passionate about One Health concepts and initiatives. I also enjoy the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of One Health. Therefore, my CSTE LEAD project will be strengthening current One Health efforts in Tennessee by developing priorities and creating strategic action plans. I am so excited to engage, collaborate, and learn with this cohort!

 

I enjoy spending my free time with my fiancé, mini-American Eskimo Dog, and two kitties. 

Hello, All!

My name is Rachel Amiya and I am the STI Surveillance Coordinator for the Washington State Department of Health, a position I have occupied for roughly 2.5 years. I earned my PhD in Health Sciences from the University of Tokyo, with a research focus on health-related behaviors and mental health concerns among people living with HIV in Kathmandu, Nepal. After graduating, I lingered in academia for several years before working for a time as a contracted research psychologist for the U.S. Army, evaluating psychological resiliency training programs for Soldiers. It has been a diverse and circuitous career path, but I am tremendously grateful to be where I am today - and to now have the opportunity to learn from such a fascinating and brilliant group as part of CSTE LEAD! 

Through new PCHD supplemental funding, I have been approved to hire several new STI epidemiologists. The resultant expansion of my team will require a significant reconfiguration of our work structures and expectations, which is a prospect both immensely exciting and, frankly, quite daunting to approach. I am hoping to utilize the structure of the CSTE LEAD program to allow myself the time, headspace, and peer/expert consultation to approach this project intentionally, thoughtfully, and in a way that will create a sustainable structure for future such transitions and expansions within the STI Surveillance team at WA DOH.

Truly grateful to be a part of this diversely talented network! 

Hi Everyone!

My name is Lauren and I am a surveillance epidemiologist at the Vermont Department of Health. I primarily work for our Environmental Public Health Tracking and Climate & Health programs.  I spent the greater part of the last year and a half co-leading our COVID-19 Epidemiology Data team, and have recently stepped down into a support role for that team in order to be able to focus more on my "normal" work again. I am passionate about making data approachable for non-technical audiences.  I have an MPH with concentrations in epidemiology and maternal and child health from Saint Louis University and have been in my current role for about 5 years.

My project will focus on data governance at the Vermont Department of Health. Prior to COVID-19 response, there was some early work done on data governance and health informatics. Issues that arose around data sharing during the COVID-19 response further highlighted the need for a department-wide data governance policy. This project will entail engaging stakeholders and gathering information about existing data sharing policies to inform the development of a clear, consistent policy that can be applied across the department. 

Outside of work I enjoy running, hiking, cookie, and spending time with my partner Emmett and our pup Penny!  I am looking forward to learning from and with you all!

Erica Hi everyone! My name is Erica Smith and I'm currently the Deputy State Epi for Delaware. I started in this role in fall of 2019 and have been co-leading our COVID Epi response with our State Epi since the early days of 2020. 

Recently I have begun transitioning out of day-to-day COVID activities, and I am doing about half COVID and half my "normal" role, which is providing mentorship and support to the Epis across the Delaware Division of Public Health. Prior to coming to DPH I was at the PA Dept of Health for a number of years as a CSTE Fellow, District Epi and then the statewide foodborne epi before leaving to earn my PhD in epidemiology from Drexel in Philly from 2016-2019. I am also the co-chair of the CSTE Early Career Subcommittee. I am excited to get involved with LEAD and learn more about all of you! 

Hi everyone, so great to read all these introductions and especially see so many HAI folks as part of this cohort as well! Sorry for my delayed intro: 

 

I'm originally from the Bay Area and bounced between New England and the west coast completing an MPH in Epidemiology of Microbial Disease at Yale and a Cal-EIS applied epidemiology fellowship at the Alameda County DPH. I have a CIC and have worked in state-level healthcare-associated infections programs in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Oregon, where I've led activities including outbreak, infection control breach, and drug diversion responses, NHSN surveillance and reporting, advisory committees, and injection safety. I'm currently the Infection Control Epidemiologist in the HAI Program for the Oregon Health Authority and right now I'm focused on rolling out infection prevention education to frontline healthcare workers via Project Firstline, SHARP grant, and an Emerging Infections Program project regarding C. difficile surveillance. 

 
Over the past few years I've been drawn to workforce development work - designing guidance, precepting MPH students, training epidemiologists and infection preventionists, career advising and mentorship, and guest lecturing. My project will be creating a competency-based model for training our new on call epidemiologists, as well as an electronic toolkit that aggregates existing resources for the on call role. Through CSTE LEAD I'm really hoping to make new connections, think about new avenues for my career, and gain more formal leadership experience. 

My intro to infectious disease was through working at a syringe exchange program, so harm reduction is very close to my heart. I also love qualitative research and quality improvement. When I'm not working I've been volunteering with a woman-owned, local and sustainably sourced florist and learning to weave. I also just baked a pretty tasty spice cake with 1/4 lb of fresh ginger for the first time (Google "NYT ginger cake")! 

Hi all,

It's been wonderful reading about the different paths this cohort took in their epidemiology careers over the winter holiday. Can't wait to meet everyone at our kick-off.

My name is Lena Swander. I grew up in small town outside of Duluth, Minnesota, where the summers are dreamy, but the winters brutal. I stumbled into epidemiology by way of a caring and attentive collegiate advisor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I did my undergraduate work in neurobiology and global health. Until senior year, I had my heart set on medical school with a bad case of MCAT tunnel vision, despite never enjoying my clinical volunteer experiences up to that point. After hearing me lament, my advisor encouraged me to apply for an internship where I spent the summer at a local health department helping them prepare for PHAB accreditation. And just like that...I was hooked! I will forever be grateful for my advisor's encouragement to explore different career paths outside of medicine, and hope I can return the favor to other students some day.

After graduation, I worked at a local vineyard in Eastern Iowa for a short time. Tending to the vines with my hands gave my brain time to spin its wheels (maybe a little too much) about how the heck do I become an epidemiologist?! If this story had a perfect arc, I would have delved into occupational and ag health after my time at the vineyard, but, alas--it doesn't :). I decided to stay close to family for graduate school, and attended the University of Iowa for my MPH in epidemiology with a focus on cardiovascular diseases.

During graduate school, I became very passionate about life course and social epidemiology. I also discovered how thrilling effective data visualization can be, and how much I LOVED grant writing (that last one still shocks me). I worked for the University of Iowa after graduation as a clinical research coordinator at the Institute for Clinical Translational Sciences for about two years. I was a project manager for their evaluation core, and lead site coordinator for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute's ADAPTABLE Trial.

In 2016, I relocated back to Madison where my epidemiology love story began for a position with the Chronic Disease Prevention Program at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. I've been here for just over five years, and its still a wild ride! I currently dedicate most of my time to the 1815 and 1817 CDC cooperative agreements, but we also have a number of other projects that keep us busy. My biggest state-led project of late was the legislatively mandated Wisconsin Diabetes Action Plan (fingers crossed it gets released in the new year!). 

I'm very excited for the formal leadership training this CSTE opportunity provides, and can't wait to start connecting with other epidemiologists across the country. My project focuses on creating an overarching chronic disease surveillance plan for my unit. I look forward to crowdsourcing feedback on that work from this group. What a fantastic way to kick off 2022!