Introductions!

1. My name is Scott Minkin. 
2. I work for the Boston Public Health Commission, 
3. located in Boston, MA. 
4. I'm looking forward to learning more about the needs of our stakeholders while we use their data to build a dashboard for them.

Nice to meet everyone!

Hi all! My name is Puja Shah and I work for Harris County Public Health in Houston, Texas. I'm looking forward to developing a tool to help automate COVID-19 cluster detection for our county. 

Greetings everyone! I'm Nicole Eiden, a Senior GIS Analyst from the Arizona Dept. of Health Services in sunny Phoenix, Arizona! Can't wait to learn more about cluster detection and using the results to inform action and help people & communities. 

Hey, y'all. I'm Anand from Austin, Texas working as a Data Visualization Specialist for the Texas Department of State Health Services. I'm looking forward to learning model building strategies using data to improve risk detection mechanisms and curb the Covid spread throughout the state of Texas. Hope to connect and collaborate with all of you soon :)

Hello Everyone! I'm Heather and I work for Boulder County Public Health in Boulder, Colorado. I'm looking forward to working with new programs and using them to create tools to better inform our response to COVID. Looking forward to working with all of you! 

Hi everyone! My name is Alexandra Shilen and I work for the University of Arizona, working with the Pima County Health Department team. I am based in Tucson, Arizona. I am really looking forward to collaborating with you all and learning new skills to put into play to modernize our data flows for COVID-19 and future outbreak response. 

Hello! My name is Danny and I'm an environmental scientist on the Environmental and  Occupational Emergency Preparedness Team at the California Department of Public Health. We are based in Richmond, CA. Excited for the opportunity to upskill our data science capabilities and improve emergency preparedness in California from chemical releases and other hazards.

 

Hello everyone:) My name is Arlene Cortez. I work for Harris County Public Health in the beautiful city of Houston Texas. I am really looking forward to expanding my data science knowledge and moving more towards predictive technology in order to enhance our local surveillance systems.

Hello everyone! My name is Amanda Vernon and I am an epidemiologist at Harris County Public Health in Houston, Texas. I am excited to enhance our cluster detection data skills for covid-19 and for later use with other notifiable conditions. 

Hi everyone! I'm Erika Austhof and I am an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, working on the Pima County Health Department team in Tucson, Arizona. I am excited to learn new tools and technologies, and apply those new skills to help reduce the impact of COVID in our community.

Hi everyone, my name is Jason Wilken, and I'm with the Environmental and Occupational Emergency Preparedness Team at the California Department of Public Health. Armando Chevez, Danny Kwon, Beverly Shen, and Svetlana Smorodinsky are my teammates. We're located in Richmond, CA. 

I feel like I've gotten pretty far removed from the data. My job is more and more administrative and less and less technical. I'm looking forward to reintroducing myself to the data that we use and figuring out how we can make our data work for us instead of vice-versa!

Hi all, my name is Corina Chung and I'm an epidemiologist with the San Mateo County Health Department in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm excited to expand our epi team's data science capacity and apply the knowledge towards improving our surveillance systems. I look forward to learning and collaborating with everyone!

Hello Everyone... My name is Edwina Williams, I am an epidemiologist with San Mateo County Health Department. I am excited to learn new tools for identifying and visualizing data related to the mental health needs of our residents.

Hello! My name is Kaylan Stinson and I am an epidemiologist with the Communicable Disease and Emergency Management division at Boulder County Public Health in Colorado.  I am looking forward to the opportunity to gain new data visualization skills and I look forward to learning and collaborating with you all!

Hafa Adai! My name is Cynthia Naval, and I am a volunteer biostatistician/data analyst with the Guam Department of Public Health and Social Services, located in Tamuning, Guam.  I am looking forward to knocking the rust off of my analytical thinking skills and learning new tools to analyze our data on fetal death, with the goal of improving pregnancy outcomes on Guam. I'm also hoping that projects like this one will kickstart more interest in data science at the agency.

Hi everyone, I'm Sarah Seidel, COVID-19 Data Dissemination Team Lead for Texas Department of State Health Services (located in Austin, TX). Team members: Emily Hall, Amanda Ingram, and Sai Anand Maringanti in the Center for Health Statistics - Agency Analytics Unit. We are hoping to further automate our data processing and dissemination for the state's COVID-19 data as well as embark on more in-depth analysis of our data to improve our public health emergency response.  

Hi everyone! My name is Emma and I'm an epidemiologist at Harris County Public Health in Houston, TX. Our project is focused on cluster detection and I'm excited to expand my data science skillset into GIS/geographic analysis and to learn more about automation.

Hi all! My name is Lauren Yerkes (last name rhymes with 'circus'), and I'm the Injury and Violence Prevention Epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health. I am looking forward to working with my colleagues here in Virginia and with you all to advance data systems linkages between COVID-19 surveillance and injury and violence hospitalization and death data. I'm certainly excited about enhancing my data science skillset as well. :) 

Good morning, everyone! My name is Kim Gaetz (pronounced "Gates"). I am the epidemiology supervisor in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch of the North Carolina Division of Public Health in Raleigh, NC. My teammates are Ariel Christensen, Autumn Locklear, Chandrika Rao, and Phoebe Shurtleff. I am looking forward to building my data science skills to better manage and move forward with our project to build and maintain an environmental health data dashboard for NC.

Hi all! My name is Khalida Willoughby, I work for the Virginia Department of Health, and I am the Population Health Trainer, I am looking forward to  improving my data skills and to learning with all of you.

Hi everyone, my name is Eline van Es, and I work as an epidemiologist for the Boston Public Health Commission (MA) and I primarily do work for our Homeless Services Bureau. I'm looking forward to improving my data science skills and improving our access to data to increase our reporting capacity.

Hi! I'm Cymone Gates (pronounced like Simone) and I'm an epidemiologist at the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS). Our office is based in Phoenix, AZ but I'm currently working remotely. I'm looking forward to advancing my skills in R to provide a cluster detection tool for our stakeholders.

Hi all. I'm Britney Rust. I work as an epidemiologist for the Mississippi State Department of Health. I've been working COVID response since last March and I do a lot of the COVID data visualization for state health department website. I'm looking forward to learning some new programs and skills to add to my background. I'm also excited to get to know everyone. 

Hello! My name is Sara Chronister. I am the Syndromic Surveillance Epidemiologist for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health located in Phoenix, AZ. I'm looking forward to building a more solid data science foundation.

Hello! My name is Gina and I am an epidemiologist at the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle, Washington. My team and I are looking forward to learning about methods to accurately and meaningfully analyze small population sizes and visualize our findings using R Shiny. 
Looking forward to meeting everyone! 

Hi everyone! My name is Beth and I'm an informatics epidemiologist at San Mateo County in California. I'm looking forward to learning best practices for data management and visualization and strengthen my coding skills! 

Hi everyone! My name is Allison Culpepper and I am the Data Acquisition Unit manager within the Bureau of Epidemiology at the Florida Department of Health in Tallahassee, Florida. My team works on syndromic surveillance, electronic laboratory reporting, electronic case reporting and data modernization. I am ecstatic to begin the DSTT program and am looking forward to collaborating with and learning from other public health informatics colleagues across the country. 
DSTT FL team members: Allison Culpepper, Jenna Webb, Brian Fox, Emma Spencer and Karalee Poschman. We are looking forward to enhancing our data science capacity and learning more about interoperability, data visualization and data analytics. I am looking forward to meeting everyone! 

Hi everyone! My name is Denny and I am a data coordinator at the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle, Washington. My team members are Scott Erickson, Gina Leipertz, Crisandra Wilkie, and Kaeli Flannery. We are primarily interested in learning more about analyzing small population sizes and developing R Shiny applications and interactive dashboards to visualize COVID-19 surveillance and vaccination data. 

Hi All! I'm Krystal and the Syndromic Surveillance Program Coordinator for the Arizona Department of Health Services.  Pre-COVID I would say our offices are in sunny Phoenix, AZ but during COVID I am teleworking and in one of the suburbs of Phoenix.  One thing I am very interested in learning from this program, is how to make more use of our timely data sources for cluster detection, including syndromic surveillance, that can be applied to multiple use cases including and moving beyond COVID-19 and Opioid Overdoses.   I can't wait to get started with this program!

Hello everyone! My name is Armando Chevez and I am a social/behavioral research scientist on the Environmental and Occupational Emergency Preparedness Team at the California Department of Public Health. Our team is based in Richmond (San Francisco Bay Area) and focuses on identifying and reducing risks from chemical releases and other hazards in California. Our team plans to leverage GIS-based approaches to inform jurisdictions and communities that are potentially vulnerable to various hazards and is looking forward to learning how to improve and better execute some of these projects. 

Greetings! I’m Svetlana Smorodinsky, disaster epidemiologist with Environmental & Occupational Emergency Preparedness Team, CA Department of Public Health, Richmond CA.  I’m excited to learn about data automation in hopes of improving (and modernizing) our existing processes.  

Hi, my name is Crisandra. I am an epidemiologist with the Urban Indian Health Institute located in Seattle, WA. I am looking forward to learning more about accurately analyzing small population sizes.

Hello everyone, my name is Trevor. I am an epidemiologist with New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. My team is addressing opioid misuse and partner engagement. I am excited to utilize new technologies to strengthen New Hampshire's ability to alert for overdose response. I look forward to this opportunity to be able to learn alongside my teammates here and everyone else.

Hi, I'm Amanda. I'm an epidemiologist with the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin. 

Pima County (AZ) Health Department, Tucson
Currently COVID-19 Testing Management Team Lead, also with the department's Public Health Data Services 
Making data accessible to and useful for health department managers.

Hi! My name is Manuela Staneva and I am an epidemiologist with the Mississippi State Department of Health, where I analyze large healthcare data sets. Currently, I'm activated on COVID to monitor and evaluate real-time hospital data. I would like to learn more about hotspot analyses. 

Hello everyone ! My name is Eleena Dhakal. I am an Informatics Epidemiologist for Kentucky Department of Public Health under the Division of Epidemiology and Health Planning. I am looking forward to learn more about data visualization and improving our current processes related to data dashboard.

Please use this message thread to tell us: 
Hi everyone! My name is Jenna Webb and I am the vaccine preventable disease surveillance epidemiologist for Florida. I work at the Florida Department of Health, Bureau of Epidemiology. My team members work for FDOH. I am located in Tallahassee, Florida. I'm looking forward to learning more about data visualization and learning different coding languages/data platforms ! 

Hi everyone, my name is Emily Payne and I am an Epidemiologist and the COVID-19 Surveillance Data Lead for Boulder County Public Health in Colorado. I am hoping to learn skills that will help me to enhance the efficiency of our COVID-19 data collection, management, analysis, and dissemination efforts including data visualization, SQL, and automation.

Hi! My name is Mirna Ponce Jewell and I'm a Superivising Epidemiologist at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health in California. I lead a few different teams on the COVID-19 response and am looking forward to better maximizing our resources for managing and analyzing our large COVID-19 database.

Hello all, I'm Phoebe Danza. I am an Epidemiologist at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health working on the county's COVID-19 surveillance and response. I'm located in sunny Los Angeles, although currently working remotely with the rest of my data colleagues. I'm looking forward to learning about how other jurisdictions are handling their large datasets/databases and hoping to gain insight into some creative data visualization solutions.

Hi Everyone, my name is Kady Pack. I'm an Epidemiologist with the WV Bureau for Public Health- Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. I typically work within the hepatitis world, but more recently have been focused on the COVID-19 response (particularly case management and contact tracing). I'm looking forward to gaining additional software skills and enhancing our surveillance system.

Claire Holladay
Hi everyone! My name is Claire and I am an epidemiologist for the Kentucky Department for Public Health located in Frankfort, KY. My team and I are excited to learn more about data visualization through dashboards to improve our surveillance efforts for COVID-19 and other reportable diseases. I look forward to learning with all of you.

Cheers!

Hello everyone! My name is Kaeli and I am an epidemiologist with Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle, Washington. I am excited to learn new data visualization techniques for driving action in the field of health equity. Also excited to learn with and from you all! 

👋🏻 Hi all,

My name is Robert Mitchell--I'm based in Claremont, CA and work for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health as a Data Scientist helping to support the COVID-19 surveillance epis. We've been working hard trying to modernize our tooling (more data engineering than data science at present) and I'm really interested to learn what other teams are doing in meeting the challenge of the pandemic. Specifically the languages, tools, and workflows.

Looking forward to getting to know everyone!

Hello Everyone,
My name is Constance Bourne. I am an epidemiologist for Mississippi State Department of Health. I have focused on maternal and infant mortality data, data regarding child death review, COVID-19 data, and I also design REDCap surveys for the agency. I'm looking forward to learning from this training as well as you guys!

Hi folks! My name is Gene Ho. While I'm based in San Francisco, CA, I work as a Jr Data Scientist/Epidemiology Analyst with the Los Angeles County Public Health Department's Data Science and COVID-19 teams. My main projects currently revolve around refactoring and making our data pipelines more efficient. I'm looking forward to learning about new tools and packages we can use to further improve our work!

Hi all! My name is Brian Fox. I work at the Florida Department of Health central office in Tallahassee. I'm very interested in getting some in-depth training on databases/SQL and getting at least some basic know-how with Python. Looking forward to working with all of you!

Hello, my name is Rachel White and I am an environmental epidemiologist at Harris County Public Health in Houston, TX. I am excited to learn more about complex spatial analysis as it relates to source exposures and cluster detection. 

Hello everyone, my name is Amy Lai and I am an informatics epidemiologist at Arizona Department of Health Services. I am excited to learn new knowledge and skills about data science and how it can help improve our current work.

Hi everyone, I'm Beverly Shen with the Environmental and Occupational Emergency Preparedness Team at the California Department of Public Health in Richmond, CA. I love working with data and am always looking to improve and expand my capability in data science. I'm looking forward to applying the knowledge gained from this program to our toxicological outbreak program and to our current work on COVID-19 response.

Hi everyone!  My name is Jennifer Collins and I am an Epidemiology Supervisor at the Maricopa County Department of Public Health in Phoenix, AZ.  I am looking forward to increasing my knowledge in data science so we can improve our cluster/outbreak detection processes currently in place.  

Good morning, 
My name is Emma Spencer and I work for the Florida Department of Health in Tallahassee. I am looking forward to working cross collaboratively on a Division-wide project that will integrate and improve data system interoperability across programs and hope to learn more on how to achieve that with this program. 

Jan 20 · Notified 62 people

Hello - I am Abby Mathewson and am an epidemiologist that is part of the New Hampshire team addressing opioid misuse and partner engagement in our state. This is a wonderful opportunity and I look forward to hearing more about everyone's projects and learning alongside you.

Hi everyone, my name is Robert Rotzin and I am the population health data lead at the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) in Richmond, Virginia. I am fortunate enough to work with many our teams at VDH, including maternal and child health, cancer, chronic disease, and injury and violence. Currently, I've also been the lead on creating and maintaining our COVID-19 visualizations. I am looking forward to learning more about linkages between data systems as well as looking at python and other tools!

Howdy do folks, my name is Dan Drociuk and I'm an Infectious Disease Epidemiologist with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control in Columbia South Carolina. I am the Section Lead of the Epi Practice and Quality Assurance Section within the Division of Acute Disease Epidemiology. I'm very much looking forward to meeting folks and learning how best to communicate to folks of all experience levels regarding how best to assess Epi Practice and Performance (egads...people HATE when they are measured....)

Cheers!
- Dan

Hey everyone! My name is Phoebe Shurtleff and I'm an Environmental Program Consultant with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in Raleigh, NC. I work in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch and I specialize in private well contamination and surveillance. I'm very excited to be a part of this program and interested in expanding my knowledge on data manipulation and geospatial visualizations using software like ArcGIS and R Programming. 

I am Ariel Christensen, an environmental epidemiologist, at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in Raleigh, NC. I also work in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch on responses, including COVID-19, EVALI, hurricanes, and cancer clusters, and manage the state's chemical release and pesticide poisoning surveillance systems. I am looking forward to learning more about data automation and understanding how multiple databases can feed into a comprehensive dashboard for data visualization and manipulation. The goal is to enhance access to environmental health data and improve public understanding of EH issues.

Hi, I am David Napp, based in Durham, NC, and am 1/2 of the external evaluator team for this project. I look forward to learning more about this project and all the interesting work you will do.

David Swenson, NH AHEDD Project Manager
Nearly 20 years with Public Health in NH creating, developing, maintaining NH's statewide local syndromic surveillance system.  I'm the administrator for the NH NSSP feed and am participating in a number of CSTE and NSSP Community of Practice (CoP) committees and workgroups.  The DSTT 2021 Program is a great opportunity to receive Coursera training and work on a project to develop a cluster alert linked to response partner action.  Looking forward to reach out and learn from other DSTT teams.