Blogs

Pop Quiz: What do Finding Nemo, the Safari internet browser and iTunes all have in common? All three are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year. CSTE is pleased to add the Applied Epidemiology Fellowship (AEF) to that list of milestone anniversaries! Since 2003, AEF has guided recent graduates through the expanding field of applied epidemiology. In 20 years, CSTE has placed 519 fellows in 45 states and the District of Columbia, 27 local, three territorial, and one tribal jurisdiction. AEF participants receive two years of on-the-job training at a state or local health department under the guidance of two experienced mentors. During the program, all fellows ...

One of this year's National Public Health Week 2023 themes is Reproductive Health, a subject close to current AEF fellow Bonnie Bloxom. Below, Bonnie shares how she found her way to epidemiology, her time studying abroad and her current work in Maternal Child Health at the Oregon Health Authority. “You should try Public Health. Just take the intro course.” Little did she know at the time, but those ten words from Bonnie Bloxom’s undergraduate academic advisor at Elon University ended up shaping the next course of her career. She’d always been interested in analytics, research and data, so her advisor asked her to give public health a try. After taking ...

As part of National Public Health Week 2023 CSTE kicked off the week off by interviewing Jim Collins, MPH, RS, Director of the Communicable Disease Division of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). Jim is also the CSTE Surveillance and Informatics Steering Committee Vice Chair. He discussed his career as an epidemiologist and what ‘community’ means to him. Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Q: What led you to being interested in epidemiology? A: Back in the early '80s there wasn't much in the news about epidemiology. I was attending Alma College, a small liberal arts school in Michigan, and took a microbiology ...

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, CSTE is featuring Alice Hamilton, the “first female epidemiologist” and a pioneer in industrial health and safety. We are pleased to celebrate the importance of women in occupational health and epidemiology. When we think about women fighting for worker protection and workplace reform, images from movies like “Silkwood” and “Norma Rae” may spring to mind – everyday people protesting and trying to better their work environments. Those characters (and their real-life inspirations) made critical improvements, but we can go much further back in history to see the beginnings of women’s influence on safety for all ...

In recognition of Black History Month, CSTE spoke with Heather Butts, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York. Ms. Butts shared a few unsung Black epidemiologists and their contribution to modern day epidemiology. Heather Butts is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University and accomplished author. After her first book, " African American Medicine in Washington, D.C.: Healing the Capital During the Civil War Era ", was published in 2014, she received a curious question from a reader. “I like your book, but why should we care about this now?” It’s a sentiment often ...