Cal-EIS Fellowship Program Graduates 2007–2023

Graduate Statistics:  1989 to 2023   

 *Totals and percentages are based on those graduates who have not retired, passed away, or are seeking employment

​2022–2023

Jamilla Abugazia, MPH

Jamilla Abugazia received her B.S. in Public Health Sciences, B.A. in Public Health Policy, and her MPH in Biostatistics from University of California, Irvine (UCI). As an undergraduate research assistant, she performed qualitative analysis on internal corporate documents from University of California, San Francisco’s Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive to identify snus marketing strategies to the public, which sparked her interest in health policy. During her graduate studies, Jamilla conducted research on the pharmacist workforce, which involved quantifying the number of pharmacists nationally from publicly available datasets and evaluating the evolving public health role of pharmacists due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For her practicum project, she worked on updating the UCI Human Resources Wellness database by creating data visualizations for family supports program utilization and analyzing prevalence of chronic conditions, physical and mental health risk factors, and utilization rates for preventive services among UCI employees from 2020 to 2021. These findings would inform enterprise-wide wellness programming and policy development for the employee population. Jamilla’s interest in epidemiology and data-driven approaches to health inequities led her to apply for Cal-EIS, where she is excited to be completing her fellowship at the Department of Health Care Access and Information.

​Marco Caro, MPH

Marco received his B.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and his MPH from the University of California, Davis. Prior to entering graduate school, Marco worked with Napa County’s Health and Human Services where he assisted underserved community members in becoming self-sufficient. After completing his Master’s degree, Marco worked with Sonoma County’s Public Health Department focusing on Tobacco Control. Marco’s experience working in the fields of health education, case management and public service helped refine a pursuit to analyze social determinants of health, craft effective public health policy and serving others. Coming from an underserved community, he understands the importance of empowering minority populations and reducing health disparities at all levels through evidence-based policies.

Marco will be completing his Cal-EIS fellowship at Sutter County’s Public Health Division within the Health & Social Services Department. He is looking forward to further developing his epidemiology skills and utilizing those skills to address health inequities. 

Megan Ouyang, DVM, MPH

Megan received her B.S. in General Biology and B.A. in Literatures of the World from University of California, San Diego and Doctors of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) from University of California, Davis. During vet school, she was involved in several One Health activities, including a poultry improvement project in Nicaragua and rural California with One Health Nicaragua, providing free veterinary care through the Knights Landing One Health Clinic, and completing the field course Rx One Health in Tanzania. After finishing vet school Megan completed the Interdisciplinary MPH program at University of California, Berkeley to continue investigating means of bettering the health of humans, animals, and the environment in a sustainable manner. Her MPH capstone used data gathered from USAID’s PREDICT project and aimed to identify and characterize social, ethnographic, and behavioral beliefs and practices that influence zoonotic disease transmission in the Lake Zone of Tanzania. Since completing her MPH, Megan has spent her time working at small animal community vaccine clinics and volunteering with the UC Davis Veterinary Emergency Response Team (VERT). With VERT, Megan was one of the Lead Veterinarians responding to the 2021 Dixie Fire in Plumas County, where she provided free veterinary care to those affected by the disaster.

As a Cal-EIS fellow, Megan will work in Alameda County with the Division of Communicable Disease Control & Prevention. She is looking forward to working in a multidisciplinary team of professionals to address public health challenges using One Health concepts over the next year.

Catalina Reinhart, MPH

Catalina received her BS in Health Care Administration from Southern Oregon University, and her Master’s in Public Health from Touro University California. Catalina’s interests include mental health disparities among low-income communities, communicable diseases, and maternal and child health. For her graduate field study, Catalina worked virtually with public health professionals in La Paz, Bolivia to combat the high incidence rates of adolescent sexual violence by developing language compatible tools regarding sex education, with particular attention to indigenous populations. During graduate school, she also had the opportunity to analyze the barriers of mental health resources presented during the COVID-19 outbreak, within Solano County. Catalina is thrilled to join the Cal-EIS fellowship and work with the El Dorado County Health and Human Services, Public Health Department. After the fellowship, Catalina aspires to continue to serve the public as an epidemiologist at the county or state level. 

Arliette Ariel Sulikhanyan, MPH

Arliette received her B.S. in Anthropology and Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She went on to complete an accelerated M.P.H. in Epidemiology from the University of California, Davis. As a first-generation child of refugees, Arliette had formative experiences in the UCLA Learning Assistant Program where she was able to explore the world of education, administration, Anti-Racism, and learn about inequity in STEM. In graduate school, she worked as a Public Health Teaching Assistant, served as a Graduate Group of Public Health Sciences Executive Board member, and co-taught the health clinic class for the Knights Landing One Health Clinic. These experiences allowed her to advocate for social and health justice within the education system, and spread awareness regarding health inequity to those students who will go on to be healthcare professionals. For her practicum, Arliette was able to create an Armenian Cancer Registry for the small nation using their newly-completed database to build upon her informatics skills. Following this, she did an epidemiological analysis of the burden of Pediatric Leukemia in Armenia using SAS software and created multilingual presentations for professional and lay audiences to communicate those findings. She was also able to work in a UC Davis research group to conduct a scoping review of the hardships faced by refugee Arab and Afghan international medical graduates.

Arliette will complete her Cal-EIS Fellowship training with the Chronic Disease Control Branch at the California Department of Public Health. Her research interests revolve around studying chronic health disparities in underserved, immigrant, and refugee communities, as well as bridging the gap between healthcare providers and public health experts. She is excited to learn more about the systemic changes that can be made at the state level to help address chronic disease and healthcare inequity, as well as getting to advance her epidemiological skillset.

Amal Syed, MPH

Amal will be completing her Cal-EIS fellowship with the Mariposa County Health and Human Services Agency. She received her B.S. in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior and her MPH with an emphasis in Epidemiology, both from UC Davis. Prior to entering graduate school, Amal served as a board member on Shifa Community Clinic, a free clinic in Sacramento that serves the uninsured population, and worked with the CDPH Health Office of Refugee Health in helping new refugee families access healthcare in Sacramento. These experiences helped her develop her interests in health disparities, maternal and child health, and environmental exposures. During her MPH program, Amal worked as a COVID-19 contact tracer and case investigator for Yolo County and completed her practicum project with Yolo Healthy Aging Alliance. She developed a comprehensive Older Adult Fall Prevention Program and completed data analysis on fall-related hospital data in collaboration with Yolo County Health and Human Services. Amal has worked in many different areas within public health which have all enforced her passion for epidemiology. She is excited to further develop her skills and explore more areas of epidemiology during her fellowship. After completing Cal-EIS, Amal hopes to work as an epidemiologist at the state or local level to continue serving the public.  

Kirstin Yeomans, MPH

Kirstin received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health with a focus in Health Promotion and Health Behavior from Oregon State University in 2019. Prior to starting graduate school, she worked as an industrial hygiene student technician at a specialty metals plant, which piqued her interest in environmental and occupational exposures. She completed her MPH in Epidemiology at Oregon State University in 2022. During her graduate studies, she completed an internship at the local level with Linn County Department of Public Health to evaluate the tobacco free campus policy and a practicum at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center where she assisted with a study on healthcare-associated C. diff infections. She also worked as a Graduate Research Assistant for Oregon Health Authority as part of their Oregon Psilocybin Services section, where she created and implemented a community interest survey. For her MPH internship project, she worked with Oregon Health Authority’s Pesticide Exposure, Safety and Tracking team to produce a descriptive report on ten years of acute pesticide-related illness in Oregon. Kirstin is interested in geographic distribution of environmental exposures, improving community resilience to the impacts of climate change, and air pollution epidemiology. As a Cal-EIS Fellow with the Exposure Investigations Section with the Environmental Health Investigations Branch, she is looking forward to contributing to air pollution research and understanding the impacts of wildfires and prescribed fires on human health. 

Cal-EIS Fellows 2021–2022

Joseph Ryan Buckman, MPH

Ryan graduated with his Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Public Health from the University of Louisville in 2019, and a Masters in Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2021. While working on his MPH, he previously worked as a Researcher II at the Children’ Hospital of Alabama and UAB Medicine performing research centered on identifying socioeconomic and geographical disparities in pediatric cardiovascular health and surgical outcomes in the Deep South. His practicum focused on mapping disparity in antenatal diagnosis of Congenital Heart Disease within the state of Alabama, focusing on rurality, race, economic status, and distance to prenatal care. His work in pulmonary toxicology as an undergraduate led him to be interested in environmental epidemiology, specifically with regards to human-environment interaction and cardio-pulmonary health. He worked as a Cal-EIS fellow in Richmond at the Environmental Epidemiology Section at California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) Environmental Health Investigations Branch. 

Kimberly Conway, DVM, MPVM

Kim received her B.S. in Health Science and B.S. in Biological Science from California State University, Fullerton, and her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) School of Veterinary Medicine. During veterinary school, Kim worked with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) on the 2015 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza outbreak in Iowa, and completed externships with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) One Health Office, USDA Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health, and USDA APHIS Veterinary Services. Since graduating veterinary school in 2018, Kim has been practicing small animal medicine, working at community vaccine clinics, working with UC Davis faculty and veterinary students to open a new free veterinary clinic for pets of the homeless, and completing her MPVM (Master of Preventative Veterinary Medicine) degree at UC Davis. Her MPVM research project involved collecting canine and feline patient blood samples, testing the samples for seven different vector-borne diseases, administering questionnaires to homeless and housed pet owners, and analyzing the laboratory and questionnaire data to assess the benefits, disease prevalence, and public perceptions of pet ownership within the Sacramento and Yolo County homeless communities.

Kim has always been interested in epidemiology, particularly diseases that are shared between animals and humans such as zoonotic spillover events and food-borne illness. She worked with the CDPH Food and Drug Branch as a Cal-EIS fellow and hopes to continue working in veterinary public health and epidemiology at the local or state level in the future.

Sean Ezenwugo, MPH

Sean received his B.S. in Biology from University of California, Los Angeles. He went on to complete his MPH with a focus in Epidemiology at UC Davis. Prior to starting graduate school, Sean worked as a special projects coordinator with a wellness organization in Los Angeles, which sparked his interest in public health. During his time at UC Davis, he worked as a graduate student researcher with Healthy UC Davis, an organization that promotes a culture of health and well-being for the campus community. For his MPH practicum project, Sean worked with the Public Health Institute to evaluate the current access to clinical and social services for sickle cell disease patients in Alameda County. Sean completed his Cal-EIS training at the Solano County Public Health Division within the Health & Social Services Department. 

Rozhan Ghanbari, MPH

Rozhan Ghanbari received her B.S. in Public Health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and her MPH in Epidemiology with a minor in Public Health Emergency Preparedness from Drexel University. Her Master’s thesis utilized the DC Area Survey data to determine if there is an association between institutional trust and depressive symptoms. Rozhan was also a Dornsife Fellow where she worked on a project that focused on state mental health authorities priorities and factors that may influence their priorities for children’s mental health as well as refining the delivery of evidence-based care in health systems. She also had the opportunity to work with the Center for Firefighter Injury Research & Safety Trends regarding the Stress and Violence in fire-based Emergency Medical Services responders project. These experiences strengthened Rozhan’s research interests in violence prevention, mental health, and emergency preparedness. Rozhan completed her Cal-EIS fellowship at CDPH within the Injury and Violence Prevention Branch in Sacramento, CA. 

Nárjara Grossmann, MPVM

Nárjara is a Brazilian Veterinarian with a Masters in Zoology from Universidade de Brasília and an MPVM from UC Davis. Her interests include population dynamics, infectious diseases, one health and geospatial analyses. For most of her career she worked mitigating conflicts in the human-animal interface. This allowed her to have a broad view of population management and a better understanding of the complex relationships between wildlife and people. This also allowed her to engage in policy making and to work alongside public institutions to solve real world problems. During her first masters she sought to see the impacts of fire on host-parasite ecology and epidemiology. During her MPVM she had an opportunity to travel to Madagascar to apply participatory surveys among hunting communities and perform epidemiological investigations during an outbreak of African Swine Fever. This experience cemented her desire to pursue a career in epidemiology. Her MPVM project focused on understanding the environmental factors associated to avian influenza cases in wild birds and improve surveillance efforts by proposing risk-based surveillance strategies. As a CAl-EIS fellow at the Napa County Health Department, she worked on the ongoing COVID-19 response, specializing in outbreak investigation and infection prevention in congregate settings, as well as tracking disease severity data, responding to outbreaks of other infectious diseases and opioid surveillance. 

Andrea Guzman, MPH

Andrea is originally from California but in the past five years has lived in South Carolina, New York, Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire. She has a B.S. in Health Science from California State University, Chico, and an MPH. from the University of New Hampshire. Before attending graduate school, Andrea’s focus was on health education in high schools and colleges regarding intimate partner violence and consent. She wanted to focus on program planning in graduate school but discovered an undeniable interest in epidemiology and policy instead. While in New Hampshire, Andrea worked for the New Hampshire Public Health Association as the Workforce Development Coordinator, and later as the COVID-19 Equity Task Force Coordinator. She did a legislative internship with Planned Parenthood Action Fund and completed her MPH practicum with the State of New Hampshire’s Division of Public Health Services. For her practicum she was responsible for collecting and analyzing survey data for New Hampshire’s Therapeutic Cannabis Program, to discern if there was a link between access to therapeutic cannabis and decreased reliance on prescription opioids for New Hampshire’s therapeutic cannabis patients. Andrea also joined New Hampshire’s Equity Leaders Fellowship, which allowed her to promote equity as a temporary board member for the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute. She completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the CDPH Tobacco Control Program, which allowed her to finally move home to California where the plan is to continue her career. 

Shumaila Hashmi, MBBS, MPH

Shumaila Hashmi pursued MPH at Portland State University (Now Oregon Health and Science University-Portland State University, School of Public Health), Portland, Oregon (OR). She obtained her medical degree and subsequent residency and fellowship training, in Obstetrics and Gynecology, at Nishtar Medical University and Teaching Hospital, Pakistan.

Shumaila recently finished volunteering at the CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch. During this period, she assisted with planning and implementation of CDC’s “Prevention Forward” program as well as the “Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Program.” Prior to this, she gained clinic administrative experience working as clinic manager for a Community Health Center in Portland, OR, before moving to California in 2019.

During graduate studies, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute on Aging, Portland State University, to evaluate interdisciplinary education and training programs for health care providers, for improving methods of care of older adults. Moreover, her internship at Oregon Health and Science University provided her with the opportunity to evaluate the “Let’s Get Healthy” program aimed at promoting better understanding of the relationship between genetic and epigenetic factors, and lifetime risk of chronic disease.

Shumaila’s professional experiences have amplified her interest in the study of social determinants of health, health inequities and lifestyle factors influencing health outcomes in diverse communities, especially in populations with high risk and high burden of disease. She completed her Cal-EIS fellowship at the CDPH Office of Oral Health and looks forward to learning from the experts, and leaders in the field of Epidemiology. She aspires to strengthen her applied epidemiologic competencies and leadership skills during the Cal-EIS training for a future role, as an epidemiologist, in the public sector.

Natalie Hurlock, MPH

Natalie received her B.A. in Human Health and Mathematics and her MPH in Epidemiology from Emory University. She completed her Cal-EIS fellow at CDPH in the Injury and Violence Prevention Branch to support the Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative and other violence prevention programs. Natalie supports the EfC Initiative and stakeholders from over 80 organizations across California in their mission to prevent and reduce Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) through primary prevention strategies that strengthen economic supports, create social normal change, and promote safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for children and families in California. Natalie has contributed to increasing statewide data collection on ACEs and positive childhood experiences (PCEs), created resources and assisted with facilitating webinars to raise awareness about the availability of ACEs and child wellbeing data and how to utilize data to educate about the need for policy change, and prepared a scientific manuscript and presented findings at a conference hosted by the University of Michigan about trends in youth suicide in California using data from the California Violent Death Reporting System (CalVDRS). In the next year, Natalie will contribute to program evaluation efforts, opportunities to strengthen child death reporting in California, a shared risk and protective factors framework for violence prevention, and data briefs about ACEs and family experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Natalie’s research interests include preventing violence among youth, maternal and child health, and chronic disease. After completing the fellowship, Natalie hopes to work as a Research Scientist and continue to address health disparities and reduce rates of violence and chronic disease among Californians.

Melinda (Mindi) Martinez, MPH, CPH

Mindi received her B.S. degree in Kinesiology from San Francisco State University. After working in healthcare for many years, Mindi returned to school to obtain her MPH from Touro University California (TUC). Healthcare led Mindi to pursue a career in public health due to her developed interest in focusing on preventative disease measures and population health, as well as her passion to address health disparities and promote positive health behaviors. Her interests include infectious disease, maternal and child health, and health equity. While attending TUC, Mindi engaged in many learning opportunities, including work as a research assistant examining the relationship between anal HPV, HIV, and aging, conducted a program evaluation on three programs for one of the largest national community-based organizations that advocates for and serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, became an Epidemiology teaching assistant, and worked as a data and grant intern for a non-profit organization serving women and children impacted by domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. Her Master’s thesis focused on factors associated with motherhood among female sex workers in Cambodia. Mindi completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the Napa County Public Health Department and is excited to further develop her skills as an epidemiologist while working on projects related to COVID-19, chronic diseases, and health equity. After her fellowship, Mindi aims to continue working with the diverse communities within California as an applied epidemiologist.

Kristen Walker, MPH

Kristen is from West Lafayette, Indiana, where she completed her B.S. in Biology and MPH in Health Statistics at Purdue University. During her MPH program, Kristen served as the President of Purdue’s Public Health Student Association, contributed to Indiana’s COVID-19 response as a Contact Tracer, and worked part-time as the Overdose Surveillance System Data Analyst at the Indiana Department of Health. She has broad epidemiological interests, including infectious diseases, environmental health, and health equity; however, her MPH practicum project, which involved analyzing Indiana’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey data to assess the prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences and their association with various health outcomes among Indiana adults, sparked her passion for injury and violence epidemiology in particular. Kristen completed her fellowship at the Sutter County Public Health Department where she provided epidemiological support across a variety of health areas. After her fellowship, Kristen hopes to continue reducing health disparities through epidemiological practice and leadership at a local level.

Frank Wu, MPH

Frank was born and raised in San Francisco, CA, received his B.S. in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his MPH with an emphasis in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Prior to graduate school, Frank worked at the Gladstone Institutes where he studied host immune responses following viral infection in the mucosa, and at Gilead Sciences where he interrogated the function of novel small molecules for the purpose of HIV cure. During his MPH studies, Frank served as a teaching fellow and a research assistant where he studied infectious disease incidence in people that inject drugs. His MPH thesis sought to understand the temporal relationship between the incidence of HIV, HCV, and drug overdoses and the pattern of healthcare use in that population. Frank completed his fellowship at the Department of Healthcare Access and Information, where he will learned to manipulate and analyze its large administrative and clinical datasets. He is excited to use this opportunity to further hone his practical skills in epidemiology.

Cal-EIS Fellows 2020–2021

Kathryn Berns, MPH

Kathryn received her BS in Biology with a minor in Microbiology in 2017 and completed her MPH with a concentration in Epidemiology in 2020, both degrees from Oregon State University. As an MPH student, her major project examined the relationship between Toxocara spp. seropositivity and substance use in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). For her internship, she participated in a research project in Costa Rica focused on understanding epidemiological relationships between people, animals and their environment through collecting and analyzing data on antimicrobial resistance trends along a farm-wildlife interface and vector-borne disease host availability in unique environments. Her background is in veterinary medicine and veterinary diagnostic laboratory work which lead her to be interested in zoonotic pathogens, tropical medicine, and the One Health approach. She welcomes collaborating alongside other professionals in an interdisciplinary team and aims to work towards reducing health disparities through public health practice. She is excited to work as a Cal-EIS fellow in the Communicable Disease Unit in the Monterey County Health Department and is eager to learn more about epidemiology at the local level.

Cassandra Fecho, MPH

Cassandra received her BS in Imaging and Photographic Technology from Rochester Institute of Technology, but later chose to pursue a career in public health due to a desire for more meaningful work, to help her community, and because of her own experiences in the health system. She then received her Pre-Nursing Post-baccalaureate Certificate from San Francisco State University and her MPH with an epidemiology focus from UC Davis while working for UCSF’s Radiology Department doing biomedical research on traumatic brain injury. For her MPH practicum project, she worked with Dr. Hannah Laqueur at the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program. There, she conducted an in-depth literature review on threat assessment, firearm purchase patterns, and behavioral indicators of mass shooting risk and developed an evidence-based protocol and codebook for conducting qualitative data analysis on California mass shooting case reports.

Working with rural communities in Latin America through volunteering with Global Brigades has helped to galvanize her desire to work with vulnerable populations. Cassandra enjoys applying epidemiological methods to a wide variety of health topics and hopes to use the hands-on epidemiology skills she learns in the Cal-EIS fellowship program to help improve the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS interventions in groups who have been disproportionately affected by this disease due to limited healthcare access. She strongly believes that healthcare is a basic human right and is committed to research that seeks to balance health disparities.

Jennifer Liu, MPH

Jennifer is from Seattle, WA where she recently completed her MPH in Epidemiology at University of Washington. Her master’s thesis focused on the association between air pollution, gestational weight gain, and infant birth weight and her graduate practicum worked on receiving data from three Washington State agencies to look at dental service utilization by the state’s refugee population. Prior to graduate school, Jennifer worked at Seattle Children’s Research Institute on a study comparing Bisphenol A (BPA) levels in children before and after dental treatment, and during her MPH program, she had the opportunity to work in opioid surveillance and COVID-19 response at Public Health – Seattle & King County. Jennifer has worked in many different areas, and those experiences have further reinforced her passion for epidemiology. She is excited to be a Cal-EIS fellow with the CDPH Office of Oral Health and be a part of this unique training program. Having been involved in oral health research for four years now, Jennifer is looking forward to continuing work in the oral health field while also developing upon her skills as an epidemiologist. 

Rachel Marusinec, MPH

Rachel received her BS in Microbiology from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and her MPH in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology from UC Berkeley. Working with Dr. Jay Graham at UC Berkeley, she performed an epidemiologic study on risk factors for ESBL-producing E. coli carriage among children in Quito, Ecuador for her graduate internship and capstone project. Prior to her MPH, Rachel worked in a cancer immunotherapy lab at UCSF studying the immune response to cancer treatments, and a virology lab at the University of Minnesota examining the molecular mechanisms of the HTLV-1 virus. She hopes to continue working as an epidemiologist at the governmental level after her fellowship. Rachel is excited to further develop her skills in epidemiology in a way that serves her community by completing her fellowship in the Division of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention at the Alameda County Public Health Department.

Crystal Milne, MPH

In her second year as a Cal-EIS Fellow with Napa County Public Health, Crystal is proud to be part of a team that is dedicated to improving health equity through community engagement and data-driven decision making. In the first year of her fellowship, she utilized human-centered design principles to identify assets and unmet needs throughout the community. She and her team worked with non-profit community partners and residents to create a Community Health Action Plan, focused on building sustainable, community-led changes in Napa County. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, she has shifted to tracking and reporting local, national, and international COVID-19 data. Crystal earned her MPH from UC Davis and spent a year serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer with the American Lung Association in Hawaii before beginning the fellowship in 2019. She has lived in three countries, six states, and seven California counties. After completing the fellowship, Crystal hopes to continue her public health career in California at the local level.

Omar Sajjad, MSc

Omar received his bachelor’s degrees in General Biology and Global Health from UC San Diego. He went on to complete his MSc in Global Health from UC San Francisco. His Master’s thesis focused on statistical analysis of risk factors for malaria infection in the Mekong Delta. Prior to Cal-EIS, Omar worked on malaria elimination for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Bangkok, Thailand. His primary interests within public health are medical epidemiology, communicable disease, food insecurity, and elimination campaigns. He will be completing his fellowship at the CDPH Food and Drug Branch in Sacramento. In the future, he hopes to contribute to disease investigation and preparedness efforts as an applied epidemiologist at the county, state, or federal level. 

Camille Stanton, MPH

Camille Stanton received her B.S. in Chemistry from Howard University and her MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from UC Berkeley. Prior to entering graduate school, she worked at a biotech company which sparked her interest in study design. During her time at UC Berkeley she developed interests in health disparities and Maternal and Child Health. She also co-founded graduate student group BAEH, Black Advocates for Equity in Health. For her MPH practicum Camille worked with epidemiologist Dr. Mahasin Mujahid to assess if stressful life events during pregnancy impacts offspring adiposity. Camille also worked as a Research Assistant to evaluate San Francisco’s first community doula program for Black and Pacific Islander birthing individuals. Camille’s Cal-EIS training will be completed at Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) in Sacramento, CA. She is excited about this opportunity to continue developing her skills as a public health practitioner.

Ruwan Thilakaratne, MPH

Ruwan received his MPH degree with a concentration in epidemiology and biostatistics from UC Berkeley in May 2020. As a student, he cultivated a passion and interest in environmental health. He conducted a national exposure assessment of artificial food dye consumption with UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health. For his summer internship and subsequently his MPH capstone, he carried out a study on the relationship between short-term ambient air pollution exposure and psychiatric emergencies. Ruwan remains highly interested in the health effects of environmental exposures, with a particular interest in children’s health and neurodevelopment in an environmental justice framework. As a Cal-EIS fellow with the Environmental Health Investigations Branch, Ruwan looks forward to learning about and contributing to impactful work in areas such as the health effects of prescribed burns, and the interaction between air pollution and genetic factors in asthma exacerbations in children. Ruwan plans to pursue a doctoral degree in epidemiology after the fellowship, with the ultimate aim of conducting methodologically rigorous epidemiologic studies and applied work at the state or national level.

Florissa Tom, MPH

Florissa Tom recently graduated with her MPH in Epidemiology from the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Florissa chose to pursue an MPH in Epidemiology because of her interest in infectious diseases and passion in addressing health disparities. For her practice experience project, she worked on a case-control study exploring the association between probiotic use and invasive infections with common probiotic organisms in a hospital inpatient population. Florissa has background experience in microbiology, quality control, regulatory compliance, and hospital infection prevention and control. She is very excited to work in Yuba County Public Health, where she will be working on projects related to STIs and syringe services programs, as well as contributing to the Yuba-Sutter COVID-19 Response Department Operations Center. After her fellowship, Florissa aims to continue serving the public as an applied epidemiologist at the state or county level.

Troy Z. Tournat, MPH

Troy is excited to join the Communicable Disease Unit at the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency as a Cal-EIS fellow this year. She received her BA in Anthropology and Psychology from UC Merced and her MPH with a focus in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan. Prior to her master’s degree program, Troy worked in community service and public health education for three years. During her graduate career Troy developed a strong foundation in statistical programming and analysis from her capstone research on the associations between mental health and neurodegenerative disorders with a population-based study. Additionally, Troy collected primary health data and conducted qualitative analysis as a graduate research assistant. Combined, these experiences help her analyze different types of health data and connect epidemiologic research to effective health solutions and impact. Troy hopes to expand her understanding of infectious disease so she can investigate outbreaks and respond accurately and efficiently as a county or state epidemiologist in the future. 

Desiree Tupas, MPH

Desiree will be completing her Cal-EIS fellowship with the Office of Statewide Health Planning & Development. She is particularly interested in promoting health and positive outcomes through assessing healthcare systems through data analysis and economic theories. Prior to her placement, Desiree received her MPH from Hawaii Pacific University. For her practicum project, she worked with the Hawaii State Department of Health’s Foodborne Disease Surveillance and Response Program to detect foodborne clusters and respond to outbreaks, educated communities, and updated procedures and protocols for subsequent student disease investigators. Desiree hopes to serve as an epidemiologist at the local/state level after completing Cal-EIS.

Cal-EIS Fellows 2019–2020

Annie Chen, PhD

Annie received her AB in Biological Sciences from Dartmouth College, and she completed her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology and a Certificate in Public Health at the University of Pennsylvania. As a graduate student, she studied how Enterobacteriaceae adapt to two different stresses, dehydration and polymyxins. She also analyzed how the use of blood cultures at a University hospital was influenced by medical service and culture results. She is interested in diverse public health issues, including infectious diseases, climate change, and emergency preparedness. Annie is excited to work as a Cal-EIS Fellow in the Acute Communicable Disease Section of the Alameda County Public Health Department and aspires to promote health equity as an applied epidemiologist at the local or state level.

Katherine Chen, MPH​

Katherine received her MPH degree from UC Berkeley in 2019, with a focus on infectious disease and vaccinology, and has a background in microbiology. For her graduate internship, she collaborated with Dr. Adithya Cattamanchi from UCSF to begin piloting a novel, digital tuberculosis treatment intervention to improve treatment adherence rates across Uganda. In addition to her interests in global health and infectious disease, Katherine has a passion for working with nonprofits and volunteering in the community. Previously, she has been a consultant for charitable organizations involved in solving food insecurity, and improving quality of care in developing countries. With her fellowship placement in the CDPH Office of Oral Health in Sacramento, she is eager to help address the burden of oral disease in California. After the fellowship, Katherine looks forward to continuing her public health career as an analyst or program manager at the state, or in the healthcare and pharmaceutical space.

Caroline Collins, MPH

Caroline completed her MPH in Environmental Health Sciences with a specialty in Global Health at UC Berkeley. Caroline is interested in environmentally-mediated infectious diseases and the impact of climate change on human and animal health. For her Masters capstone project, Caroline worked with the CDPH Infectious Disease Branch, where she described histoplasmosis-associated hospitalizations in California from 2000-2017 using data from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD). Prior to Caroline’s graduate training, she worked as a Research Assistant I at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, where she studied human development using amphibian models. Caroline is placed with the CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch in Richmond. After completing Cal-EIS, Caroline is excited to pursue a career as an epidemiologist at either a state or local health department. She is motivated to contribute to projects addressing climate change and adverse health outcomes, particularly amongst vulnerable populations. 

Nellie Gottlieb, MPH

Nellie received her MPH from NYU’s College of Global Public Health. During her graduate career, she contributed to research focusing on resilience and community in New York City’s young MSM population. Prior to her fellowship, Nellie worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA member in Lake County, California updating data surveillance systems, implementing programming, and completing community outreach surrounding issues related to the opioid epidemic. Her future interests include the intersection of mental health and public health in the ever-changing humanitarian landscapes of the future. Nellie will be completing her Cal-EIS fellowship in the Safe and Active Communities Branch, working on opioid surveillance and the National Violent Death Reporting systems.

Chandra Greenberg, MPH

Chandra received her BS in Biology from UC Santa Cruz and her MPH with an emphasis in infectious diseases and vaccinology from UC Berkeley. While studying biology at UCSC, she also took an array of general education classes oriented toward social justice. Her interest in both science and social issues led her to pursue a graduate degree in public health. She completed her MPH practicum at PaxVax, a biotech company in Redwood City, CA, where she researched literature and data on the epidemiology of cholera in the Philippines and Nigeria. For her MPH capstone project, she wrote an overview of Clostridioides difficile infection challenges and control strategies. Chandra’s Cal-EIS placement will be completed at the Placer County Public Health Department in Auburn, CA. Her main interests within public health are infectious disease epidemiology, health disparities, and social justice. She hopes to gain a broad knowledge base in applied epidemiology and public health during her Cal-EIS placement so that she can become an effective public health practitioner moving forward. 

Caitlin Jones, MS

Caitlin completed her MS in Conservation Medicine at Tufts University, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. Her graduate work was motivated by her interests in One Health, epidemiology, and intervention assessments. Her capstone project focused on evaluating socio-economic factors and trophic cascades resulting from Tasmanian devil facial tumor disease and devil declines. Following her MS work in Tasmania, Caitlin worked as a Disease Intervention Specialist for reportable sexually transmitted infections in an Iowa county public health office. She will be continuing her placement with CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch for her second year of fellowship and is also starting her PhD in Public Health Sciences at UC Davis this fall. Caitlin would like to pursue a career as an epidemiologist through continued work with state/local public health agencies. She hopes to contribute to projects furthering our understanding of shared risks among animals, humans, and the environment.

Yi Lor, MPH

Yi Lor received his BS in Biological Science and his MPH with an emphasis in Epidemiology from UC Davis. Before his MPH, he volunteered for the UC Davis student-run clinic working closely with the Asian population by advocating for free preventive health services. He led the Hmong Lifting Underserved Barriers (HLUB) Clinic to increasing health screenings and hepatitis vaccinations for the Hmong community in Sacramento. For his MPH practicum project, he worked with epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Whitmer utilizing data from the Study of Longevity in Diabetes (SOLID) to perform research in understanding the relationship between Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus self-care behaviors and healthy aging in an elderly cohort. Yi will be completing his Cal-EIS fellowship with the CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch in Sacramento. He plans to continue developing his knowledge and skills as a public health practitioner to better serve his community.

Catherine Lorenz, DVM, MPH

Catherine will be completing her Cal-EIS fellowship with the CDPH Food and Drug Branch in Sacramento. Catherine graduated from Michigan State University with her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Master of Public Health degrees in 2016. Her MPH studies focused on the public health impact of Lyme disease in Michigan. She then practiced rural mixed animal medicine (food and companion animals, exotics, and wildlife) followed by urban small animal medicine (dogs and cats). She has supplemented her regular career with low-cost spay/neuter surgeries in her community in order to reduce disease transmission resulting from dog and cat overpopulation. She has also practiced international veterinary medicine in the Galapagos Islands, New Zealand, and Madagascar. Her most recent veterinary trip was to the Andasibe region of Madagascar, where she worked with non-profit organizations to administer rabies vaccines, collect samples for infectious disease surveillance, and perform sterilization surgeries for free-roaming dogs and cats that pose a threat to endangered lemur populations. Her interests in public health are infectious zoonotic disease, vector borne disease, and food safety. Upon completion of the fellowship, she hopes to work as a veterinary epidemiologist at the state or federal level and become a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine.

Jessica Morales, MPH

Jessica is excited to join Sutter County Public Health as a Cal-EIS Fellow. She received her BS in Anthropology from UCLA and her MPH (emphasis in Epidemiology) from UC Irvine. Prior to her MPH, Jessica worked as a unit clerk for Sharp Chula Vista’s Labor and Delivery department, where she gained first-hand experience of the demands of healthcare. During her graduate career, Jessica split her time between working as a Teaching Assistant for a wide variety of classes, participating in research, and building connections as the Professional Development Coordinator for the Graduate Public Health Association at UCI. Jessica also interned with Orange County Health Care Agency’s Alcohol & Drug Education & Prevention Team (ADEPT) as a part of her practicum, where she worked with ADEPT’s data analyst to create youth alcohol and other drug (AOD) use profiles for targeted school districts. In the future, Jessica hopes to serve in the US Public Health Service and work towards improving mental health policy.

Justin Tonooka, MPH

Justin received his Bachelor’s in Public Health – Community Health from California State University, Fresno, and his MPH with an Epidemiology emphasis from the University of California, Davis. While studying at Fresno State, Justin volunteered with the campus health center and acted as a student peer health educator. Near the end of his undergraduate career, he participated in community health outreach in the West Fresno area and assisted Valley Children’s Hospital and the Ronald McDonald House in improving and promoting their family meal voucher program. While earning his MPH, Justin worked with epidemiologist Dr. Sharon Minnick from Tulare County Public Health to analyze vehicle-related bicycle and pedestrian accidents from 2010-2016 in the area. Using the traffic data gathered from the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) and the UC Berkeley Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS), he examined crash data using Microsoft Access and SAS to identify significant environmental and behavioral risk factors contributing to fatal or severe collision outcomes. After completing his studies at UC Davis, Justin worked briefly as an assistant epidemiologist at Tulare County Public Health before accepting a Cal-EIS placement with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), where he is staying for a second fellowship year. He hopes to return to the Central Valley area to work as an epidemiologist in the future.

Ralph Welwean, MPH

Ralph received his BS in Health Care Management from Clayton State University and his MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Georgia College of Public Health. After graduating from Clayton State University, he participated in Project IMHOTEP summer internship program, where he worked as a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Undergraduate Public Health Scholar with the Nigeria Polio Team. In that role, he analyzed qualitative and quantitative immunization program data collected on the National Stop Transmission of Polio Program (NSTOP) as part of the internal assessment of the program. In graduate school, he led a cross-sectional study to better understand sleep habits and academic performance among UGA undergraduates. He also worked as a Graduate Research Assistant, where he was actively involved in a reproductive health mystery shopper pilot study to better understand the landscape (access and quality) of reproductive health services in Georgia. For his practicum and capstone, he worked at the CDC with the Nigeria Polio Team, where he evaluated the Nigeria polio supplementary immunization activity dashboard indicators for data collected from 2014-2018. Ralph has a diverse background, but the recurrent theme has been his deep desire to make a difference by serving underserved communities. He has a passion for connecting with people across cultures and plans to continue this work during his Cal-EIS fellowship with the CDPH California Tobacco Control Program. After completing the fellowship, Ralph hopes to work as a research scientist or epidemiologist at the state level and return to school to obtain a Ph.D. in Epidemiology.

Cal-EIS Fellows 2018–2019

Anthony Arce, MPH

Anthony received his MPH under the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Track from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). As a graduate student, he contributed to many studies for several research programs and centers. Under the Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training Program in Thailand, he developed and implemented a survey in coordination with the local community assessing communication technology and identifying factors associated with social support among rural elders. In addition, he participated in the Minority Training Program in Cancer Control Research where he performed data analysis and drafted manuscripts for three studies: colorectal cancer screening among Filipinos, vegetable exposure among children, and sweet-tasting among children. He was also involved with CSUF’s cancer disparities center in which he worked with several studies in the topics of skin cancer, nutrition, tobacco control, and palliative care. Overall, he is interested in preventative efforts and lessening the burden of chronic diseases, particularly cancer. Anthony completed his Cal-EIS fellowship at Napa County Public Health, where his major project involved data visualization and community engagement as part of public health department accreditation. After completing his fellowship, he is working as an epidemiologist at the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health in the Environmental Health Division.

Mikala Caton, MPH

Mikala received her MPH in Global Epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in May 2018. For her practicum project, Mikala worked with Emory’s Department of Medicine to conduct research on the role of the environment in hospital acquired infections and establishing thresholds for hospital room cleanliness. For her master’s thesis, Mikala analyzed data from the Cholera and Other Vibrio Illness Surveillance System to determine national Vibrio vulnificus mortality trends and the risk of death across patient characteristics, clinical symptoms, and mode of transmission over time. Throughout her studies, Mikala also conducted surveillance for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch and co-led the Student Outbreak and Response Team at Emory. Mikala completed her Cal-EIS fellowship within the Communicable Disease Unit at the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency, where she was hired as a full-time epidemiologist at the conclusion of her fellowship. Her major project analyzed overdose-related emergency medical service encounter data for surveillance of opioid misuse trends, overdose cluster identification, and opportunities for public health intervention.

Connie Chung-Bohling, MPH

Connie completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) Program within the Center for Health Care Quality at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). She is particularly interested in disease outbreak control and surveillance. Prior to this placement, Connie worked in research at Stanford University on healthcare quality indicators and as a data analyst at CDPH within the Immunization Branch working with local health centers to reduce the burden of vaccine-preventable disease in California. She holds an MPH in epidemiology from the University of Arizona. Connie’s Cal-EIS major project investigated causes of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections in California hospitals. Upon completion of Cal-EIS, she obtained employment through Heluna Health in CDPH’s Infant Botulism Program.

Carolina Downie, MPH

Carolina completed her fellowship at the CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch. She received her BS in Biology from Stanford University and her MPH in Epidemiology from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. During her MPH studies, she interned at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and worked on implementing a mental health syndromic surveillance system, and analyzed spatiotemporal trends in mental health-related emergency department visits. Carolina’s research interests include chronic disease, surveillance systems, and data analysis. Carolina’s major project during her fellowship was developing CDPH’s Burden of Diabetes in California 2019 data report. Upon graduation from Cal-EIS, Carolina enrolled in the University of North Carolina’s PhD program in Epidemiology.

Laura Farnsworth, MPH

Laura completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health Division at the California Department of Public Health. She is interested in understanding how epidemiological work such as data surveillance and evaluation affects program planning and policy development. Prior to starting her fellowship, she completed her MPH at the University of California, Davis. For her Master’s thesis, she conducted a state-by-state review of childhood obesity prevention interventions in early care and education environments. This project was completed at the Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Branch at CDPH. Before starting graduate school, Laura served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala, where she started a health education program aimed at improving the health of indigenous youth and their families. Her primary research interests include maternal and child health, nutrition, chronic disease prevention, and groups that experience health disparities. Laura’s major project analyzed pre-pregnancy weight status and weight gain during pregnancy by various maternal characteristics. Upon graduation from Cal-EIS, Laura entered UC Davis’s PhD program in Public Health Sciences.

Melissa Hermerding-Lim, MPH

Melissa completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with Contra Costa Health Services. Prior to her fellowship, she earned her MPH from UC Berkeley in 2018 with a concentration in infectious disease and vaccinology. During her practicum at UC Berkeley, she worked with the Forum for Collaborative Research to help determine recommendations for better community engagement/good participatory practices for HIV cure related research. Prior to starting graduate school, Melissa was a member of AIDS UNITED AmeriCorps, and while she was working for the Marion County Health Department, she assisted in collecting data on homelessness and injection drug practices in a commercial sex worker population. In addition, she also assisted with HIV testing services following the outbreak that occurred in Austin, Indiana. Her research interests include HIV and STIs, the opioid crisis, and health disparities in marginalized populations. For her Cal-EIS major project, Melissa conducted an evaluation of low-threshold buprenorphine for homeless populations. After Cal-EIS, she is competing pre-requisite coursework prior to applying to nursing school.  

Madison Jablonski-Sheffield, MPH

Madison came to the CDPH Chronic Diseases Control Branch’s California Wellness Plan as a Cal-EIS fellow after completing her MPH at UC Davis. She has spent much of her career thus far working in various levels of local food systems, including working on farms in California and abroad, teaching cooking classes to young students, acting as the director for a Food and Garden Summer Camp in New York, and working at a local bakery. Her time as a “lunch lady” sparked the desire to enact population level change and make healthy choices the easy choice. Recently, her focus has shifted towards general mental health/wellbeing. She believes that the world would be a different place if mental and physical self-care techniques were easy to implement and encouraged for everyone. Her Cal-EIS work was focused on addressing chronic diseases in California, including her major project that explored the joint association between multiple healthy lifestyle behaviors on odds of diabetes and depression using adult CHIS data. She hopes to eventually leverage her epidemiology skills to work in science translation and policy advocacy for the state of California. Upon graduation from Cal-EIS, she is working as a budget analyst at the California Department of Finance.

Emily Kelly, MSc

Emily received her BA in Human Biology from Stanford University and her MSc in the Control of Infectious Diseases from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her Master’s thesis involved statistical analysis of risk factors for tapeworm infection in Western Sichuan, China. This project integrated her interests in data analysis, foodborne illness, One Health, and underserved populations. Since graduation, Emily has been pursuing research on antibiotic drug development as part of her Fulbright research grant in Varanasi, India. She completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the CDPH Food and Drug Branch, where she completed her major project on sprouts-related incidents in California, while also designing a retail sampling surveillance program for Cyclospora. After Cal-EIS, Emily entered medical school at UC San Francisco.

Brittany Morgan, MPH, CPH

Brittany received her MPH in Epidemiology from the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She has had a wide variety of experiences within public health, including spearheading research to understand the service utilization gaps among consumers of health and social services in the homeless and low-income population of Oregon; evaluating a comprehensive, city-wide housing with services project for low-income senior citizens; working in community-based participatory research projects that address the health promotion and chronic disease prevention needs of tribal communities; and identifying risk factors for recurrent urinary tract infections to aid antibiotic stewardship efforts at the largest medical services provider in the state of Oregon. She has a diverse background, but the recurrent theme has been her deep desire to make a difference by addressing health disparities. She has a passion for connecting with people across cultures and continued this work during her Cal-EIS fellowship with the CDPH California Tobacco Control Program. Brittany’s Cal-EIS major project was an exploratory factor analysis of tobacco use and attitudes among bilingual and English-proficient-only Hispanics. After completing the fellowship, Brittany secured employment at the California Department of Food and Agriculture as an epidemiologist addressing antibiotic stewardship.

Rachel McCullough-Sanden, MPH

Rachel McCullough-Sanden worked with the Communicable Disease Unit in the Public Health Department at the Santa Cruz Country Health Services Agency during her Cal-EIS fellowship. For the three years prior to Cal-EIS, Rachel served as a technical advisor in Central Africa for the Cameroon Population-based HIV Impact Assessment, based in Yaoundé, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a Global HIV Surveillance Fellow with the Associated Schools and Programs for Public Health (ASPPH) and the Public Health Institute (PHI). In collaboration with the Cameroon Ministry of Public Health, Institute of National Statistics, and ICAP, Rachel engaged stakeholders, facilitated protocol adaptation and tool development, monitored field trainings and data collection, and continues with data analysis and manuscript writing to inform and improve the HIV continuum of care in Cameroon. Rachel earned her Master of Public Health and her Global Health Certificate from Columbia University (2014). She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with Bachelor degrees in Sociology and Legal Studies (2006). She previously worked in microfinance and enjoys traveling, nature, and improving systems. Rachel’s Cal-EIS major project analyzed symptom severity among Santa Cruz pertussis outbreak cases based on vaccination status. She was hired by Santa Cruz County as an epidemiologist upon completion of her fellowship.

Mar-y-sol Pasquiers, MPH, CPH

Mar-y-sol received her BA in Cultural Anthropology from UC Davis and her MPH with an emphasis in Epidemiology from UC Irvine. As an undergraduate, Mar-y- sol focused on issues surrounding cultural competence, patient experiences of medical care, and illness experience with a focus on minority and underserved populations. As a graduate student, she contributed to numerous projects, including data collection for the Long Beach Zika CASPER, an assessment of childhood violence and community efficacy, as well as an internship with the Orange County Healthcare Agency, Epidemiology and Assessment, where she helped to summarize reportable invasive pneumococcal disease cases in Orange County. For her practicum, she worked with the CDPH Biomonitoring California Program in Richmond to help analyze data from the Asian/Pacific Islander Community Exposures Project. Mar-y-sol completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch in Sacramento, where her major project developed enhancements to CDPH’s opioid overdose surveillance dashboard. Upon graduation from Cal-EIS, Mar-y-sol was hired as an epidemiologist in CDPH’s Safe and Active Communities Branch.

Alice Porco, DVM, MPH

Alice completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with OSHPD, the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, in Sacramento. Alice obtained her DVM through Ross University in St. Kitts and completed her clinical year at UC Davis. Alice obtained her MPH at the University of Minnesota while practicing small animal medicine in the Bay Area. During her veterinary education, she became interested in the One Health concept, studying the relationship between animals, humans, and the environment. She worked on several research projects, including wild monkey population management, sea turtle and shorebird conservation, and toxoplasmosis in livestock. She also founded the RUSVM Green Initiative, a community organization whose accomplishments include facilitating a national recycling program, creating nationwide incentives to use reusable products, and organizing community outreach events to teach local children about conservation. During her MPH education, she completed her field experience at the National Wildlife Research Center in Ft. Collins, CO, where she worked on research projects including Brucella transmission in bison and elk, LPAI transmission between mallards and starlings, oral bait preference in skunks, plague vaccine efficacy in prairie dogs, and scrapie surveillance in slaughterhouse sheep. Her public health interests include infectious disease epidemiology (specifically zoonotic disease) and food safety/security. Alice’s major projects during her Cal-EIS fellowship involved geospatial analysis of the association between distance traveled for coronary artery bypass grafting surgery and patient outcomes, as well as an analysis of animal bites in California. After graduating from Cal-EIS, Alice is working with the Wildlife Conservation Society to design a wildlife surveillance system in Cambodia.

Sonal Patel, MPH

Sonal completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the California Department of Public Health Office of Oral Health in Sacramento. She received her BAs in Molecular and Cell Biology and Philosophy from UC Berkeley and her MPH in Epidemiology from UC Irvine. Before her MPH, she worked with underserved populations in San Francisco and Alameda Counties, especially those communities experiencing high levels of housing and food insecurity, and advocated on behalf of homeless individuals and families to promote micro-housing and rent control in historically diverse and lower-income neighborhoods. She also worked for San Francisco County in their foster care and adoptions department and as a researcher at UC Berkeley. As a graduate student, Sonal contributed to numerous projects, including childhood violence and community efficacy surveillance and GIS mapping, improving whooping cough vaccination rates among pregnant women, supportive housing initiatives for homeless individuals on Skid Row, and the development of Orange County’s Medical Reserve Corps program. For her MPH practicum, she spent six months with the Health Policy and Research Department at the Orange County Healthcare Agency analyzing demographic and geographic risk and protective factors for opioid overdose and abuse. Sonal looks forward to a career as a research scientist or program manager at the state or national level, working to advance health equity and improve the well-being of underrepresented communities. After completing her Cal-EIS fellowship, including her major project on patient characteristics and trends in visits to California emergency departments for non-traumatic dental conditions, Sonal was hired by the California Department of Finance as a budget analyst.

Cal-EIS Fellows 2017–2018

Neale Batra, MSc

Neale completed his Cal-EIS fellowship at the Communicable Disease Control Program of the Santa Clara County Public Health Department. Neale aims to work at the intersection of communicable disease epidemiology and public health emergencies. Prior to this placement, Neale coordinated public health emergency preparedness and response programs for the City of Philadelphia, where he was heavily involved in the health and medical response to the visit of Pope Francis in 2015. He has also led geospatial research projects on global and domestic HIV/AIDS for USAID (PEPFAR) and for CDC. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Stipend provided by the Public Health Foundation Enterprises, Inc. Preceptors – George Han, MD, MPH and Lisa B. Hernandez, MD, MPH

Lizette Brenes, MPH

Lizette received her BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and her MPH in Epidemiology and Statistics from Claremont Graduate University. Before her MPH, Lizette worked for many years with underserved and underrepresented communities in California and internationally, and researched risk factors and barriers that influence the prevention and treatment of sickness, the experience of illness, healing processes, and overall health and well-being in minority and immigrant groups. As a graduate student, she completed a fellowship with a US Veterans’ Affairs medical center in Wisconsin, with a focus on Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) women veterans. For her MPH practicum, Lizette spent three months at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, where she supported the Ebola Response Team in assessing behavior change interventions, vaccine preparedness and trust, and social aspects of therapeutic and vaccine trials. She also contributed to systematizing debriefing interviews to identify knowledge gaps in community engagement during the 2014-15 outbreak in West Africa. Following her MPH, she participated in a six-month health disparities fellowship program at a pediatric hospital in Delaware, looking at pediatric cancer and social determinants of health. Lizette was placed with the CDPH Oral Health Program in the Chronic Disease Control Branch in Sacramento. She looks forward to a future working as an epidemiologist at the state or local level and to collaborating on national and international health equity initiatives.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Oral Health Program. Preceptor: Jayanth Kumar, DDS, MPH

Tessa Fischer, DVM, MPH

Tessa was placed in the CDPH Food and Drug Branch. Prior to the fellowship, she graduated from the University of Illinois with her DVM and MPH in epidemiology/biostatistics. She has a background in One Health and is interested in the interrelationship between human, environmental, and animal health. Her Master’s thesis examined the role of animal contact in the acquisition of sporadic salmonellosis in Illinois. During her doctorate program, she assisted in the analysis of global maternal deaths associated with malaria. She has also studied the role of soil solarization in killing weed seeds to reduce the use of pesticides and helped designed solar ovens for a community in Nigeria. Prior to Cal-EIS, Tessa worked in small animal and wildlife clinics and completed several externships in a variety of medical settings and government departments. Tessa’s career goals include serving as a public health veterinarian and conducting research as a wildlife epidemiologist.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Food and Drug Branch. Preceptors – Larry Upjohn, Pharm. D., Maja Hajmeer, PhD, Madhur Kumar, MS, PhD, and Qinyan (Julia) Zhu, PhD

Lauren Gernon, MPH

Lauren completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the Chronic Disease Control Branch at CDPH in Sacramento. She completed her Master of Public Health with a concentration in infectious disease and vaccinology at UC Berkeley in May 2017. For her practicum, she was involved in a pilot project using enhanced hypothesis-generating questionnaires for salmonellosis cases in California at the Infectious Disease Branch in CDPH Richmond. She is interested in augmenting her infectious disease training with work in chronic disease, and will be primarily involved with projects on diabetes and cardiovascular disease surveillance. Lauren is interested in preventative medicine and hopes to have a career building linkages between population health and policy to individual health and health care delivery.

Stipend provided by CDPH California Wellness Plan Implementation. Preceptor - Jessica Núñez de Ybarra, MD, MPH, FACPM

Allison Hargreaves, MPH

Allison received her MH in Global Epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in May 2017. Her practicum project focused on identifying and assessing barriers to health care provision for female sex workers in Kigali, Rwanda. Allison’s master’s thesis utilized the National Immunization Survey and investigated the association of sociodemographic characteristics and vaccine schedule adherence with completion of early childhood immunization in the U.S. As a recipient of the Coverdell Fellowship for returned Peace Corps Volunteers (having served in Malawi 2012-14), Allison was involved with the Clarkston-Rollins Connection, a community engaged learning program that partners public health graduate students with local agencies serving refugee communities. Allison is excited to return to her home state and work with the CDPH California Tobacco Control Program as a Cal-EIS Fellow. Following this year, Allison hopes to work as an applied epidemiologist at the local, state, or national level.

Stipend provided by the CDPH CA Tobacco Control Program. Preceptor – Xueying Zhang, MD, MPH, MS

Trang Hoang, MPH

Trang served as a Cal-EIS Fellow with the CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch in Richmond, CA. She graduated from the University of Nebraska Medical Center with an MPH in Environmental, Agricultural and Occupational Health. She is interested in projects that help her to become a well-rounded environmental epidemiologist and a public health practitioner. A few of her topics of interests are water and air quality; she wants to explore how these environmental indicators affect different health outcomes. She is also interested in hands-on projects where she gets to interact with the community and brings awareness to people about the conditions of their health, and how the environment plays a huge role in determining their quality of life. After her fellowship year, Trang hopes to continue working as an environmental epidemiologist at the state or local department, and discerns the prospect of obtaining further education in public health practice and applied leadership skills. Stipend provided by the CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch. Preceptor- Sumi Hoshiko, MPH

Melissa Ibarra, MPH

Melissa received her MPH at the University of California, Davis. During the course of her studies, she completed her practicum with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Her capstone project involved the study of hand hygiene biosecurity practices of fairgoers at California county fairs. Additionally, she spent the 2015-2016 academic year working as a Graduate Student Assistant at the Cal-EPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment. Here she worked on risk assessment, including preparation of Hazard Identification Documents, literature review, summarization and synthesis of data. During her first year as a Cal-EIS Fellow, Melissa worked at the Office of Health Equity where she assessed the impacts of climate change on California communities, particularly vulnerable populations. During her second year of fellowship, Melissa addressed health inequities through her work at the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. Stipend provided by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. Preceptor – Merry Holliday- Hanson, PhD

Brandi Loper, MS, MPH

Brandi received her MPH with emphasis in Urban Health Disparities, from Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in June 2017. During her time in the program, she completed her practicum at Esperanza Community Housing working on the Healthy Breathing Project:  a longitudinal epidemiological study of in-home health visitation program of community health workers, utilizing community health impact data, to describe and understand the distribution and determinants of chronic disease. After completing the MPH program, she went on to intern at Cedar Sinai Medical Center, as a clinical researcher, where she conducted biostatistical data analysis on national databases within the context of trauma, acute surgical care, and quality improvement utilizing Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Brandi served as a Cal-EIS Fellow in the CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch in Sacramento, where she worked on prevention of adverse childhood experiences (Essentials for Childhood), as well as addressing the opioid epidemic.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch. Preceptor – Steve Wirtz, PhD

Monise Magro, DVM, MPVM

Monise obtained her veterinary degree in Brazil in 2010 and her master’s degree in Preventive Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis in 2016. She completed her Cal-EIS fellowship with the Healthcare- Associated Infections (HAI) Program within the Center for Health Care Quality at the California Department of Public Health. Monise is interested in public health epidemiology, infectious and zoonotic diseases, and One Health. She has been actively involved with disease prevention and control initiatives in California and Brazil. She participated in animal vaccination campaigns targeting underserved communities. Recently prior to Cal-EIS fellowship, she worked in animal shelters assisting in the prevention of zoonotic diseases and outbreaks. Monise has had extensive experience with data analysis, geographic information system, and biostatistics. She published a research study investigating the association of environmental and climatic factors on aspergillosis in dogs in California. Her study findings provide novel information about this infection in dogs, promote awareness, can enrich the investigation of risk-based interventions, and serve as a model for further studies of aspergillosis in humans. Monise is particularly interested in disease outbreak investigation and surveillance, and her ultimate goal is to utilize her medical skills and background experience for the enhancement of human and animal health. Upon completion of her fellowship, Monise desires to serve as an infectious disease epidemiologist at the local or state level.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Healthcare-Associated Infections Program. Preceptor – Erin Epson, MD

Victoria Mercado, MPH

Victoria completed her fellowship at the CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch. Prior to her fellowship, she worked at the City of Berkeley Public Health Division, where she assisted in updating Berkeley’s 2017 Health Status Report. She completed her MPH at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, concentrating in Epidemiology/Biostatistics. During her graduate career, she volunteered at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Pacific Health to create data visualizations and reports highlighting the unique health needs of the US Affiliated Pacific Islander population. She was an active member of Cal Student Assistance for Public Health (Cal STAPH), participating in surge capacity events at local and state health departments. For her MPH internship, she conducted data analysis projects focused on the Asian/Pacific Islander population under Dr. Gilbert Gee at UCLA, through the Minority Training Program in Cancer Control Research (MTPCCR). Victoria hopes to use her experience as a Cal-EIS fellow to begin a career in applied epidemiology at the local or state level.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch. Preceptor – Catrina Chambers, PhD, MSPH

Jessica Parry, MPH, CHES

Jessica received her MPH in Community Health Sciences from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She completed her MPH field study with the Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control at CDPH, where she was involved in program planning and evaluation for the Delta Mercury Exposure Reduction Program and an occupational safety train-the-trainer for home childcare providers. Following her field study, she continued to work with the CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch on environmental justice related projects. Her interests include nutrition and chronic disease prevention, maternal and child health, and occupational health and safety. Jessica was placed at the CDPH Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program for her Cal-EIS fellowship, where her primary research involved better understanding infant and early childhood obesity in the California WIC population. In the future, Jessica hopes to continue working as a research scientist at CDPH. Stipend provided by the CDPH Women, Infants and Children Division. Preceptors – Patricia Gradziel, PhD and Susan Sabatier

Stephanie Sanz, MPH

Stephanie completed her Cal-EIS Fellowship with the CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch. Her interests include maternal and child health, violence prevention, and reducing health inequities. Prior to the fellowship, Stephanie received her MPH from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health Epidemiology and her Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences in Psychology and Women’s Studies at San Diego State University. During her studies, she worked on numerous public health projects with varied goals/populations- a pilot physical activity program for pregnant women, a randomized control trial aimed to increase physical activity among church-going Latinas, a longitudinal study aimed to assess the relationship between neighborhood safety and physical activity, and an evaluation of a state-funded program that provides breast and cervical cancer services to low income/ underinsured women. In the future, Stephanie would like to work as a research scientist in local/state government or academia and return to graduate school to earn a PhD.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch. Preceptor – Steve Wirtz, PhD

Kali Turner, MPH

Kali was placed at the CDPH Food and Drug Branch in Sacramento for her Cal-EIS fellowship. She obtained her MPH in Environmental and Occupational Health from the University of Washington with an emphasis in One Health. During graduate school, Kali was part of the Student Epidemic Action Leaders (SEAL) Team, which aims to provide students with experience in applied epidemiology. As a SEAL, she worked with Washington State Public Health to develop an online reporting system for foodborne illness complaints and with King County Public Health on the Zika virus response. She has also volunteered at the Los Angeles County Public Health Department in the Veterinary Public Health program, assisting in creating a survey regarding antibiotic use in small animal veterinary practices in LA County, and assisted in public outreach regarding Rabies and Zika viruses. Her interests include infectious disease epidemiology, zoonoses, emergency response, and global health. Kali hopes to work as an epidemiologist at the national/local level, or for a non-profit organization after completing her fellowship.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Food and Drug Branch. Preceptor – Laurence R. Upjohn, Pharm. D.

Cal-EIS Fellows 2016–2017

Kurtis Anthony, MPH

Kurt completed his Cal-EIS Fellowship (Fellowship) at the California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) Environmental Health Investigations Branch. He is interested in environmental justice, the health effects of the built environment, and climate change vulnerability. Prior to the fellowship, Kurt received his MPH in epidemiology/biostatistics from UC Berkeley. His master’s thesis examined the effect of wildfire smoke on asthma exacerbation in the San Diego Medi-Cal population during the 2007 California wildfires. During graduate school, he also analyzed data for a study about the health effects of an active transportation project in students in Marin County, CA. In the future, he is planning to apply to doctoral programs in epidemiology and would like to work as an epidemiologist for a state agency.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch. Preceptor – Sumi Hoshiko, MPH

Rebecca Campagna, DVM, MPH

Rebecca completed her Fellowship with the CDPH Infectious Diseases Branch’s Veterinary Public Health Section. Prior to the fellowship, she received her DVM degree from Tufts University, and MPH degree in Epidemiology with a certificate in Global Health from UCLA. She has worked with the CDC and multiple local health departments and traveled abroad to research avian influenza in Indonesia and foodborne diseases in Brazil. She hopes to pursue a career as a public health veterinarian or infectious disease epidemiologist and become a diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine.

Stipend provided by CDPH Veterinary Public Health Section. Preceptor – Curtis Fritz, DVM, MPVM, PhD

Elizabeth Dingbaum, MPH

Elizabeth completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Chronic Disease Control Branch (CDCB). She is interested in preventive medicine, chronic disease surveillance systems, and health education. She has completed her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology at the University of California (UC), Davis. For her practicum project, she created a conceptual framework for a statewide pre-diabetes and diabetes surveillance system as a part of goal three of the California Wellness Plan: to create accessible and usable data. The project was completed in CDPH’s CDCB. During graduate school, she also volunteered at Clinica Tepati, a student-run clinic at UC Davis, where she assisted with the creation and implementation of a health education program for diabetes management. She plans to continue volunteering at Clinica Tepati during her time in Sacramento. Elizabeth’s career goal is to become a physician and apply her epidemiology and public health skills to serve her community at both the individual and population level. Stipend provided by the CDPH Prevention First Advancing Synergy for Health.

Preceptor - Jessica Núñez de Ybarra, MD, MPH, FACPM.

Jennifer Lam, MPH

Jennifer completed her Fellowship at the Los Angeles County Public Health Department in the Veterinary Public Health program. She obtained her MPH in Epidemiology from Oregon State University in 2016. Her coursework in biology and public health, in addition to prior experience as a veterinary assistant, has led to an enthusiasm for infectious disease epidemiology, zoonoses and the interdisciplinary nature of public health. She completed an internship in summer of 2015 with Oregon’s public health department, assisting with the state’s enhanced food- borne illness surveillance program. She administered surveillance and outbreak interviews, and identified clusters/outbreaks for state epidemiologists. She enjoys coding, data management and analysis, and looks forward to gaining experience in both human and animal public health during her time with LA County. Following the end of her fellowship, Jennifer would like to work as a local, state or national infectious disease epidemiologist. Stipend provided by the CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch. Preceptor – Karen Ehnert, DVM, MPVM, DACVPM

Danielle Lippert, MPH

Danielle completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Chronic Disease Surveillance and Research Branch. She is interested in better understanding how epidemiological work impacts public health program planning at the state level. Prior to this placement, she completed her MPH at the UC Davis. For her thesis, she examined the causes and potential prevention strategies of K-12 chronic absenteeism within the American Indian and Alaskan Native population of Sacramento, CA. Her primary research interests include groups that experience health disparities and program evaluation. In the future, Danielle hopes to work as an epidemiologist at the state or federal level. Stipend provided by the CDPH Chronic Disease Surveillance and Research Branch. Preceptor – Kurt Snipes, PhD

Sean O’Malley, MPH

Sean completed his Fellowship with CDPH’s Center for Health Care Quality’s Healthcare-Associated Infections Program. Sean received his BA in Biology, Psychology from Augustana College in Rock Island, IL, and his MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Iowa College of Public Health. As a graduate student, he assisted with various research projects including studies related to antibiotic-resistant S. aureus among Iowa farmers and hand hygiene practices among anesthesiology staff in the operating room setting. After graduation, he worked in Denver, CO on a study evaluating respiratory mask protective effectiveness among healthcare personnel before moving to Los Angeles, CA to become a research associate at the UCLA Center for Clinical AIDS Research and Education. After the fellowship, he is interested in serving as an infectious disease epidemiologist at the local or state level. Stipend provided by the CDPH Healthcare-Associated Infections Program. Preceptor- Erin Epson, MD

Katherine Schmarje, MPH

Katherine completed her Fellowship with the County of Napa to work on a Chronic Disease Burden Report for Napa County. She received her MPH, with a focus in epidemiology, from the UC Davis. Prior to her fellowship, Katherine interned with the Department of Defense HIV/AIDS Prevention Program (DHAPP) in San Diego, CA. During her time at DHAPP, Katherine collaborated with epidemiologists and public health workers to develop and promote HIV/AIDS prevention programs for high-risk countries in Africa and South America. Katherine recently worked with CDPH in Sacramento, CA. There she developed and administered a survey to assess use of the Provider Portal within the CalREDIE surveillance system. In addition to chronic disease, Katherine will contribute efforts towards Zika, local communicable disease, and emergency preparedness. After her fellowship, Katherine plans to pursue a career in applied epidemiology, with a focus on low income and/or high-risk populations.

Stipend provided by the Napa County Public Health. Preceptor – Jennifer Henn, PhD

José Rangel-Garibay, MPH

José completed his Fellowship with the Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention at the Los Angeles Department of Public Health. He received his MPH in Health Education and Communication from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. He completed his practicum at the Louisiana Public Health Institute where he collaborated with another graduate student to write a report outlining recommendations for the adaptation of an evidence-based sexual and reproductive health curriculum to fit the needs of Latino adolescents living in the greater New Orleans area. His research interests include chronic disease prevention, and infectious disease surveillance. His career goal is to work as an applied epidemiologist for a state or local health department or an infection control epidemiologist for a hospital system.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch. Preceptor – Tony Kuo, MD, MSHS

Miriam Siegel, DrPH, MPH

Miriam competed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Environmental Health Investigations Branch where she will be involved in various projects evaluating environmental hazards and associated health outcomes in California. She graduated with her Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree in Epidemiology at the University of Kentucky in 2016 with an occupational epidemiology focus. Her dissertation assessed neurobehavioral outcomes associated with pesticide and organic solvent exposure in agricultural workers. She has an MPH in Leadership, Management, and Policy from the University of Cincinnati; and has been involved in work with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Stipend provided by the CDPH Environmental Health and Investigations Branch. Preceptor – Sumi Hoshiko, MPH

Jenna Tucker, MPH

Jenna completed her Fellowship with the CDPH’s Food and Drug Branch in Sacramento, CA. She is interested in food and drug regulation and foodborne outbreak investigation. She completed her MPH, with concentration in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, at UC Berkeley School of Public Health. During graduate school, Jenna worked as a research assistant with the California Emerging Infections Program in Oakland and served as a graduate student instructor for public health laboratory courses. Her comprehensive project involved linking data collected by the California Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) with Census population estimates to explore trends in campylobacteriosis incidence across poverty and age groups. Following completion of the fellowship program, Jenna hopes to work in the field of applied epidemiology at the state or local level.

Stipend provided by CDPH Food and Drug Branch. Preceptor – Laurence R. Upjohn, Pharm. D.

Nichole Watmore, MPH

Nichole completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s in Safe and Active Communities Branch. Nichole received her MPH in Epidemiology from San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health. Nichole has interned in the Safe and Active Communities Branch in the past. She was involved in program planning and evaluation of teen dating violence prevention programs as well as injury surveillance pertaining to child maltreatment. She has also interned at the Sacramento County Department of Public Health assisting with investigations of West Nile Virus and TB. For her Master’s thesis, she examined the geo-spatial relationship between homeless persons and homeless services throughout San Diego County by examining the proximity and clustering of homeless individuals near shelters and feeding services using GIS mapping and analytics. Nichole hopes to work as an epidemiologist at the state or local level after completing her fellowship.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch. Preceptor – Steve Wirtz, PhD

Kira Watson, MPH

Kira completed her Fellowship with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health, Research, Evaluation, and Planning Unit. She completed her MPH in Urban Public Health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. During the course of her studies, Kira served as a graduate student intern with the Pacific AIDS Education and Training Center (PAETC) and DHHS, Office of Minority Health, Preconception Peer Educators Program (PPE). Through internship experiences, she collaborated with a myriad of Public Health and Medical Professionals committed to curtailing maternal and infant health disparities. Kira’s keen interest in infant and women’s health care motivated her to become an Office of Minority Health, certified Preconception Peer Educator and Charles R. Drew University, PPE Liaison. For her MPH culminating exercise, Kira drafted a grant proposal for a 2013 March of Dimes Community Award to fund the community outreach endeavors of the Charles R. Drew PPE Program. Through collaborative efforts with Charles R. Drew University and the UMMA Community Clinic, the PPE Program was selected to receive funding to address infant mortality rate disparities and adverse maternal health outcomes among African Americans in South Los Angeles communities. Kira completed her practicum with the Charles R. Drew University, PAETC where she was involved with analyses of LA County AIDS/HIV data and select impact trends among MSMs residing in South Los Angeles. Her career plans are to work as an Epidemiologist at the local, state or national level.

Stipend Provided by the CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch. Preceptor- Shin Margaret Chao, PhD, MPH

Cal-EIS Fellows 2015–2016

Marissa Abbott, MPH

Marissa completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Safe and Active Communities Branch. During her first year in the fellowship, she primarily supported the California Essentials for Childhood Initiative, a child maltreatment prevention project. Prior to Cal-EIS, Marissa completed her MPH as a part of the 3-2 Program at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. For her thesis, she examined the breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices of HIV positive women in India. Her primary research interests include maternal/child health, and injury epidemiology and violence prevention. In the future, Marissa plans to return to graduate school and to work as a public health professional at the state/national level, at an academic medical center, or at a non-profit organization.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch. Preceptor – Steve Wirtz, PhD

Adam D’Amico, MPH

Adam completed his Fellowship with the CDPH’s Healthcare-Associated Infections Program in Richmond, CA. Adam received his MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from UC Berkeley School of Public Health. During his course of study, he analyzed data collected by San Francisco Department of Public Health for the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance survey. His master thesis examined the relationship between venues where MSM meet in San Francisco and their HIV serodiscussion practices. Adam’s career goal is to become an applied epidemiologist working in infectious disease for a state or local health department.

Stipend provided by CDPH Healthcare-Associated Infections Program. Preceptors – Dr. Jon Rosenberg and Lynn Janssen, MS, CIC, CPHQ

Kelly DeBaene, DVM, MPH

Kelly DeBaene completed her second year Fellowship at Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency. She graduated from the University of Illinois with Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and Master of Public Health degrees. During her MPH, she concentrated in epidemiology and worked on several projects including an epidemic model of a hypothetical avian influenza outbreak at an urban zoo as well as a survey of Illinois physicians and veterinarians and their communication regarding zoonotic diseases. Prior to Cal-EIS, she worked in small animal clinics in Chicago and most recently, shelter medicine in Santa Barbara. During her first Cal-EIS year, she worked with the Emergency Preparedness program and Communicable Disease Unit where she led the development of preparedness plans for emerging infectious diseases, assisted in surveillance, and created an infectious disease investigation manual. For her major project, she conducted a survey on parents’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to childhood vaccinations and personal belief exemptions. She was involved in revising rabies reporting procedures and tools and conducting a CDPH survey of Valley Fever knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs in an endemic community. During her second year, she will continue to work in emergency preparedness and infectious diseases. Her second major project will focus on opioid misuse in Santa Cruz County while she is a member of the Safe Rx Santa Cruz steering committee. Kelly’s career goals include becoming a diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine and serving as an infectious disease epidemiologist or public health veterinarian at the local or state level.

Stipend provided by the County of Santa Cruz, Health Services Agency. Preceptors – Lisa B. Hernandez, MD, MPH and Arnold Leff, MD

Amina Foda, MPH

Amina completed her Fellowship with CDPH Maternal Child and Adolescent Health Program, Center for Family Health’s Epidemiology, Assessment and Program Development Section.

Amina completed her MPH in Epidemiology with a certificate in the Social Determinants of Health at Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health. For her master’s thesis, she investigated whether residence in an ethnic enclave similarly protected against adverse birth outcomes among Arabs and Latinos in the state of Michigan between 1989 and 2013. Amina completed her practicum at the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau where she was involved with analyses of national infant mortality data and select impact estimates.

Stipend provided by CDPH Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Program. Preceptor – Mike Curtis, PhD

Kimberly Foster, MPH

Kim completed her Fellowship with the Live Healthy Napa County Program at Napa County Public Health. During her first year, her major project involved the creation of a variety of maps including maps of social determinant of health indicators and health outcomes with a neighborhood-level focus. She also participated in the CASPER study following the South Napa Earthquake as well as a GIS training grant opportunity. In her second fellowship year, she will continue to build upon her major project. She will also work on a burden of chronic disease report, participate in the upcoming Statewide Medical and Health Exercise and participate in a project involving a survey of Valley Fever knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. Prior to the fellowship, she received her MPH in Epidemiology from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Her career goal is to be an applied epidemiologist working in government here in California. Stipend provided by Napa County Public Health. Preceptor – Dr. Jennifer Henn

Justine Hutchinson, PhD, MPH

Justine completed her second year Fellowship with CDPH’s Environmental Health Investigations Branch (EHIB). During the first year of her fellowship, she produced a report on the burden of damp and moldy housing conditions among adults with asthma and other vulnerable populations. She also conducted a study of thyroid cancer incidence using age-period-cohort models, and analyzed trends in emergency department visits for type 1 diabetes in California by region. Her second year with EHIB included a major project to measure the impact of a large wildfire event on vulnerable populations and on the health care system by linking Medi-Cal claims to modeled smoke exposure data. She was involved in a survey of Valley Fever knowledge, attitudes and behaviors in a community in an endemic region. Justine’s goal is to serve as an epidemiologist at the state or local level. Justine completed her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology at Dartmouth Medical School in 2012. For her doctoral dissertation, she examined the genetic regulation of mammary development and its relationship to breast cancer. Next, she studied public health at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Her practicum was at CDPH’s Occupational Health Branch, where she conducted a survey with the California Safe Cosmetics Program on salon worker exposure to formaldehyde from professional styling products. Stipend provided by the CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch. Preceptor – Sumi Hoshiko, MPH

Asundep Ntui, DVM, MS, DrPH

Asundep completed his second year Fellowship with the Los Angeles County Department of Veterinary Public Health. He worked on syndromic disease surveillance in animals believing that an early detection of disease outbreak in animals could prevent a similar occurrence in humans. He also worked on rabies control and animal importation at the Los Angeles International Airport. While his emphasis is on zoonotic diseases and disease outbreaks in animals, he was part of the team investigating the recent measles outbreak in Los Angeles County. Asundep obtained his DVM from University of Nigeria, Nsukka and his DrPH in Epidemiology from the University of Alabama Birmingham’s School of Public Health. His doctoral dissertation was on Antenatal Care Attendance and Pregnancy Outcomes among women; a study he designed and conducted in Kumasi, Ghana. Asundep is interested in acquiring the knowledge and skill set needed in addressing issues of public health importance in general and infectious diseases in particular. He completed the Cal-EIS Fellowship in September 2016 and accepted an Epidemiologist position at the Solano County Public Health. Stipend provided by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Preceptor – Karen Ehnert, DVM, DACVPM

Eloycsia Ratliff, MPH

Eloycsia completed her Fellowship with the Epidemiology Planning and Evaluation Department and Contra Costa Health Services. Eloycsia received her MPH from San Francisco State University. During the course of her studies, Eloycsia interned with the Communicable Diseases Program at Contra Costa Health Services, working alongside Epidemiologists conducting disease investigations and cleaning/reviewing data. In her last semester, Eloycsia was a Teacher’s Assistant for an undergraduate Epidemiology course, where she assisted with the development of curriculum, taught lessons on disease investigations, and assisted with research. Her thesis focused on increasing rates of Sepsis and other Healthcare Associated Infections among the African American population. Her career plans are to work as an Epidemiologist at the Local, State or National level.

Stipend Provided by Contra Costa Health Services Preceptor- Abigail Kroch, PhD, MPH

Shaniqua Smith, MPH

Shaniqua completed her second year Fellowship with the Contra Costa County Public Health Communicable Disease Programs. Shaniqua received her MPH from the University of Georgia College of Public Health, concentrating in Epidemiology. During the course of her studies, she completed her practicum at the Georgia Department of Public Health working with the Georgia site of the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS) System. Using data from the NHBS, she produced a capstone project describing the risk of homelessness, given HIV status, among Heroin using injection drug users in the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area. She hopes to use this experience to begin a career in applied epidemiology at the local or state level, here in California. Stipend provided by Contra Costa County Public Health Department. Preceptors – Erika Jenssen, MPH and Paul Leung, MPH

Julia Wei, MPH

Julia completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Safe and Active Communities Branch. Julia received her MPH in Epidemiology/Biostatistics from the UC Berkeley. During her MPH, Julia worked at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California where she participated in systematic review of the relationship between volume of cancer surgeries performed at a facility and patient outcomes. For her MPH internship, she worked at the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative, analyzing data on newborn infants requiring critical care in California. For her thesis, she examined the association between usage of antenatal steroids prior to preterm delivery and the incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage in newborns. Julia hopes to continue working as an epidemiologist at a state or local health department in California.

Stipend provided by CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch. Preceptor – Steve Wirtz, PhD

Patricia A. Ziálcita, MHS

Patricia completed her Fellowship with the Science and Education section of the CDPH Food and Drug Branch in Sacramento. She worked on various projects related to food, drug and medical device safety. Patricia received her MHS in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Patricia has had a variety of experiences since completing her degree. She completed an internship with the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC, worked as a Latino Outreach Coordinator for the Area Agency on Aging in Napa and Solano, and was most recently working as a Communicable Disease Control Investigator at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She plans to work in the field of applied epidemiology after completing her fellowship.

Stipend provided by CDPH Food and Drug Branch. Preceptor – Laurence R. Upjohn, Pharm. D.

Cal-EIS Fellows 2014–2015

Danny Allgeier, MPH

Danny completed his Fellowship with Contra Costa Health Services’ Emergency Medical Services. Danny received his MPH from the University of California, Berkeley, concentrating in Epidemiology/Biostatistics. During his time at Berkeley, Danny worked for Cardno ChemRisk, a consulting firm specializing in occupational health, environmental exposures, and risk assessment. For his thesis, he conducted a meta-analysis to determine the dose response curve between arsenic in drinking water and lung cancer. He hopes to continue working as an epidemiologist for a local or state health department following the fellowship.

Stipend provided by the Contra Costa County Public Health Department. Preceptor – Dr. Abigail Kroch

Jaynia Anderson, MPH

Jaynia completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Safe and Active Communities Branch. She completed her MPH in Epidemiology with a certificate in Maternal and Child Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. During her studies, she worked with the Birth Defects Branch at the CDC and on the FUCHSIA Women’s Health research study at Emory University. For her MPH internship, she designed and conducted a study in Cape Town, South Africa looking at barriers experienced by women accessing reproductive health services. Previous public health experience includes working on California’s West Nile virus surveillance program with CDPH. Jaynia hopes to pursue a career as an epidemiologist at the state or local level.

Stipend provided by CDPH Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Steve Wirtz

Madhurima Gadgil, MPH

Madhurima completed her Fellowship with CDPH Chronic Disease Control Branch’s Oral Health Unit. In her second year Fellowship, Madhurima worked on an oral health burden report for California. Her projects included a GIS hotspot analysis of preventable dental conditions using emergency department data. Before the fellowship, Madhurima completed her MPH at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, where she pursued a dual focus in epidemiology and program planning. Madhurima’s interests include nutritional epidemiology, environmental health, and the use of GIS for disease surveillance. After the fellowship, she hopes to work as an epidemiologist for a public agency.

Stipend provided by CDPH’s Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Caroline Peck

Sindana Ilango, MPH

Sindana completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Chronic Disease Control Branch. She is interested in better understanding the role of the State in preventing cancer and cardiovascular disease. Prior to this placement, she received her MPH in Epidemiology from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. During her graduate program, she completed her practicum at the County of San Diego Community Health Statistics Unit and Emergency Medical Services where she analyzed emergency department visits for behavioral health diagnoses. Sindana’s career goals include pursuing a doctoral degree in epidemiology and practicing epidemiology and public health in the public sector. Stipend provided by CDPH’s Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptors - Dr. Shannon Conroy and Dr. Janet Bates

Kathryn Jeanfreau, MPH

Kathryn completed her Fellowship in the Public Health Division of Yuba County Health and Human Services Department. Prior to starting this fellowship, she completed her MPH in Epidemiology at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Public Health. She worked for the Louisiana Breast and Cervical Health Program and completed projects with the HIV Outpatient Program in New Orleans during her time at LSUHSC. Through her studies, she developed interests in the areas of chronic disease, environmental, and social epidemiology. Kathryn plans to explore more areas of public health during her time in Yuba County, and upon completion of her Cal-EIS fellowship, she hopes to pursue a career in epidemiology at the local or state level. Stipend provided by Yuba County Health and Human Services. Preceptors – Dr. Michael Kinnison and Bill Smith, MPH

John Kaufman, MPH

John completed his Fellowship with Contra Costa County Environmental Health. Prior to his fellowship, he completed his MPH in global environmental health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, GA. During his program, he worked for CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health analyzing data for an investigation of childhood lead poisoning linked to gold mining in rural Nigeria. He completed his master’s practicum working for the NGO CARE in Mozambique, where he collected and analyzed data for an evaluation of a water and sanitation program. His fellowship projects will include piloting a set of performance measures to be adopted by local health departments statewide and improving foodborne illness surveillance in Contra Costa County. John plans to pursue a doctoral degree next fall.

Stipend provided by Contra Costa Environmental Health. Preceptor – Dr. Marilyn Underwood

Gael Lamielle, DVM, MPH

Gael completed his second year Fellowship at Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Veterinary Public Health (VPH) program, and recently became a Diplomat of the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine. During his time with VPH, he has had a wide variety of experiences working with animal disease outbreaks, puppy inspections at Los Angeles International Airport and human diseases outbreak such as tuberculosis and pertussis. Gael was born and raised in France and moved to the US right before college. He studied veterinary medicine at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, CA and graduated in 2009. Since then, he completed an MPH at the University of Minnesota and worked as a veterinarian in a small animal clinic. He enjoys working with issues at the interface of animal and human health, especially with zoonotic diseases. Gael plans to remain in the veterinary public health field for his future career. Stipend provided by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Preceptor – Dr. Karen Ehnert

Vijay Limaye, PhD

Vijay completed his Fellowship with CDPH’s Environmental Health Investigations Branch in Richmond, CA. He worked on several projects assessing the health impacts of wildfire-driven air pollution and urban greening programs. Vijay completed a Ph.D. in Epidemiology/Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin- Madison in 2014 under the direction of Dr. Jonathan Patz, a pioneer in the field of environmental health. His dissertation focused on the dual aims of assessing the health impacts of climate change-driven air pollution, as well as quantifying how chronic exposures to high levels of air pollution impact life expectancy in India. He is broadly interested in environmental health problems in the U.S. and India, particularly the links between climate change, exposures to extreme heat and air pollution, and population health. He graduated with High Honors from the University of California-Berkeley in 2007, completing a B.A. in Environmental Sciences with a minor in Spanish Language and Literature. He then worked as an Environmental Scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 office in San Francisco on Tribal Clean Water Act programs. After the fellowship, he is interested in continuing work in the public sector to advance environmental health research and policy. Stipend provided by the Sequoia Foundation. Preceptor – Sumi Hoshiko, MPH

Marijoyce Naguit, MPH

Marijoyce completed the second year of her Fellowship with Solano County Public Health. During her first year, she worked on various projects such as the Maternal Child and Adolescent Health (MCAH) Needs Assessment, training hospital providers to use Cal-REDIE, and analyzing STD trends in the county. For her second year, she focused on Solano County’s Community Health Status Assessment. Marijoyce received her MPH in Epidemiology at Florida International University, School of Public Health and Social Work. Prior to her fellowship, she conducted research on indicators of heart disease in women and analyzed the impact of consultation planning on cancer patients’ decisional self-efficacy and anxiety in Mendocino County. Upon completion of her fellowship, she plans on pursuing a DrPH in Epidemiology and continuing her career in public health as an Epidemiologist at the local or state level. Stipend provided by the Solano County Public Health Department. Preceptors – Dr. Michael Stacey and Meileen Acosta, MPH

Sarah Park, MPH

Sarah completed the second year of her Fellowship with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. She completed her MPH in General Epidemiology with a Certificate in Global Public Health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Her project is to explore the early impact of the Affordable Care Act by analyzing trends in readmission rates for Heart Failure, Acute Myocardial Infarction, and Pneumonia from 2007 to 2013. To date, she has been involved in several different projects, including investigating a Norovirus outbreak and providing analytical support to the Emergency Medical Services Authority. Her long-term future career goals include pursuing a doctoral degree in epidemiology and serving as an epidemiologist either abroad or domestically at the state or national level.

Stipend provided by the Office of Statewide Health Planning & Development. Preceptors – Dr. Merry Holliday- Hanson and Dr. Holly Hoegh

Kyle Rizzo, MPH

Kyle completed his Fellowship with the CDPH’s Healthcare-Associated Infections Program. He earned his MPH from the Division of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology (IDV) within the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. During graduate school, Kyle worked for the CDPH Office of Viral Hepatitis Prevention and completed projects with the City of Berkeley Public Health Division. He served as a teaching assistant in IDV Division, and was an executive board member for the graduate student group Cal STAPH. Kyle is an active member in The Berkeley Free Clinic Lab Section Collective, and plans to continue studying and working in the field of infectious disease epidemiology after his fellowship.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Healthcare-Associated Infections Program. Preceptors – Dr. Jon Rosenberg and Lynn Janssen, MS, CIC, CPHG

TaNisha Roby, MPH

TaNisha completed her second year Fellow at the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, Healthcare Outcomes Center. TaNisha is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Public Health where she received her MPH in General Epidemiology. Her personal and professional research interests include the epidemiology of malnutrition, as well as metabolic and endocrine disorders, mainly types 1 and 2 diabetes; disparities in prevalence and outcomes of these and like conditions; lifestyle and socio-demographic factors associated with disparities; and barriers to and beliefs around a healthy lifestyle. Following the completion of her fellowship year, TaNisha plans to seek employment at a state or local public health agency prior to pursuing doctoral studies in Epidemiology or an allied research field. Her passion is to apply the outstanding education and training she has received, both inside and outside the classroom, for public service. Stipend provided by the Office of Statewide Health Planning & Development. Preceptors – Dr. Merry Holliday- Hanson and Dr. Holly Hoegh

Matthew P. Shearer, MPH

Matt completed his Fellowship with the Communicable Disease Programs for Contra Costa County Health Services. As part of his fellowship, he helped prepare and train for a regional anthrax attack exercise in the San Francisco Bay Area. He graduated with a Master of Public Health in epidemiology from the University of Michigan. While in Ann Arbor, he focused his studies on emergency preparedness and infectious disease outbreak response and transmission modeling. As part of an internship with a local health department in Michigan, he coordinated a full- scale Strategic National Stockpile exercise and conducted the state investigation for the largest norovirus outbreak in Michigan history. Matt hopes the Cal-EIS fellowship will be the beginning of a career in emergency preparedness, particularly policy development for bioterrorism and infectious disease outbreak response. Stipend provided by the Contra Costa County Public Health Department. Preceptors – Dr. Wendell Brunner and Erika Jenssen, MPH

Marion Tseng, PhD, MPVM

Marion completed her Fellowship with CDPH Food and Drug Branch’s Science and Education Section. She worked on food safety research projects under the guidance of Dr. Laurence Upjohn. Marion received her Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, and then went on to complete her Master of Preventive Veterinary Medicine at University of California, Davis. After working on epidemiology of infectious diseases in wildlife and domestic animals, Marion continued to complete her PhD at Michigan State University. Her doctoral research focused on epidemiology of Shiga toxin producing E. coli in finishing swine and human in Michigan. Marion plans to work in the field of applied epidemiology after her fellowship year, and become an epidemiologist at a local or state health department.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Food and Drug Branch. Preceptor – Dr. Laurence Upjohn

Cal-EIS Fellows 2013–2014

Brendan Darsie, MPH

Brendan completed his Fellowship with CDPH’s Safe and Active Communities Branch. Before entering the fellowship, he received his MPH in Epidemiology from Oregon State University. During his time at Oregon State, he worked as a research assistant, and completed projects relating to chronic diseases and aging. He also completed an internship at the Benton County Health Department where he completed the Benton County Health Status Report, a comprehensive report on the health statistics of the county. Brendan’s career goals are to work as an epidemiologist at the state or federal level. Stipend provided by the Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Steve Wirtz

Alexandra Lee, MSPH

Alex completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Chronic Disease Control Branch. She received her MSPH in Epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. While in Atlanta, she worked at the CDC in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention. She also completed an internship at UCSF, where she analyzed healthcare utilization of diabetic patients in a self-management program. Her interests lie in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and nutritional epidemiology. Alex’s career goals include pursuing a doctoral degree in epidemiology and serving as an epidemiologist at a public agency.

Stipend provided by the Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Shannon Conroy

Monica Murphy, DVM, MPH

Monica completed her second year Fellowship with Contra Costa Public Health Communicable Disease Programs. Prior to entering the fellowship, Monica was a writer and a practicing veterinarian. She received her MPH from Johns Hopkins in 2010. During the first year of her fellowship, Monica worked on a variety of projects including zoonotic and enteric disease investigation, rabies prevention, and tuberculosis (TB) program improvement. In her second year, Monica hopes to concentrate more deeply on her major project, which uses TB genotyping data for retrospective program analysis. Following the fellowship, Monica hopes to practice public health at the state or local level. Stipend provided by the Contra Costa County Public Health Department. Preceptors – Dr. Wendel Brunner & Erika Jenssen

Lauren Nelson, MPH

Lauren completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Environmental Health Investigations Branch. She is interested in learning how environmental factors influence health and contribute to health disparities. Lauren completed her MPH in Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. While a student, she worked in the Developmental Disabilities Branch of the CDC on an autism study. For her thesis, she did a spatial analysis of the combined effect of preterm birth and neighborhood socioeconomic level on developmental and educational outcomes of children in early elementary school. After this fellowship, Lauren hopes to continue working as an epidemiologist at a state or local health department in California. Stipend provided by the CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch.

Preceptors – Dr. Daniel Smith & Sumi Hoshiko

Mayuri Panditrao, PhD, MPH

Mayuri completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program. She received her PhD in Epidemiology and her MPH in Infectious Diseases from the UC Berkeley. For her doctoral dissertation, Mayuri studied the effect of in utero HIV exposure on postnatal growth in HIV-exposed uninfected children in India. Further, she also studied the barriers associated with utilization of continued HIV-related treatment in women who had previously received prevention of mother-to-child treatment (PMTCT) services in India. For her MPH internship, Mayuri carried out a population-based study to identify the risk factors for Chikungunya fever in Sewagram, India. As an MPH student, Mayuri also lead a team of graduate students to India to study the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in predicting malaria outbreaks. Mayuri’s interests include the epidemiology of new and emerging infectious diseases, and the use of geospatial surveillance techniques in investigating disease outbreaks. Following the completion of her Cal-EIS fellowship, Mayuri’s goal is to pursue a career in infectious disease epidemiology at the state or federal level. Stipend Provided by the CDPH Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program (IBTPP). Preceptors - Dr. Stephen Arnon, Dr. Jessica Khouri & Jessica Payne

Elizabeth Roberts, DVM, MPH

Elizabeth completed her MPH at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and her DVM at the University of California, Davis. Her MPH concentration was in infectious diseases, with a project that examined the epidemiology of H5N1 in migratory birds. Following her MPH, she worked in shelter medicine, including medical and surgical outreach in underserved communities. For the past two years, she worked as a public health veterinarian for San Mateo County, primarily with the Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Communicable Disease Departments. Her interests include all things public health, and her goals are to practice public health at the state or federal level. Stipend provided by the Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Curtis Fritz

Cal-EIS Fellows 2012–2013

Sara Sowko, MPH

Sara completed her second Fellowship with the Contra Costa County Public Health Communicable Disease Programs. Before entering the fellowship, she completed her MPH in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health. During her first fellowship year, she worked on a wide variety of projects including: conducting outbreak and disease case investigations and outbreak investigations, helping generate relevant disease control and prevention suggestions, developing disease education materials and participating in infectious disease emergency preparedness planning activities. As an independent project, she conducted a retrospective review of all the reported pertussis cases in Contra Costa County during the California epidemic in 2010-2011. Sara’s goals include furthering her academic knowledge in Public Health and serving as an Epidemiologist at the local or state level. Stipend provided by the Contra Costa County Public Health Department. Preceptors – Dr. Wendel Brunner & Erika Jenssen

Tu My To, MPH

Tu My completed his Fellowship with CDPH Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program. She received her MPH in Epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Her previous experience in public health includes interning at the Los Angeles County Public Health Laboratory and working with the Parasitic Diseases Branch at CDC to subtype Cryptosporidia species in samples from a pediatric cohort study. For her master’s thesis, she analyzed the effectiveness and clinical impact of using the GenoType® MDRTBplus line probe assay (a rapid diagnostic test) to detect multi-drug resistant tuberculosis for routine testing in a mycobacteriology laboratory in Manila, Philippines. Tu My’s goals include pursuing a career in infectious disease epidemiology at the state or federal level.

Stipend provided by the CDPH Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program (IBTPP).

Preceptor – Dr. Haydee Dabritz

Roza Tammer, MPH

Roza completed her Fellowship with Communicable Disease within the Division of Communicable Disease Control & Prevention at the Alameda County Public Health Department. Before completing her MPH in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, Roza worked for the Community and Economic Development Agency of the City of Oakland, and completed internships at the San Francisco and Berkeley Departments of Public Health. While at Yale, Roza completed research projects with practical applications in unintentional prescription opioid poisonings and hepatitis C surveillance and follow-up. Her work experience included assistantships at the New Haven Health Dept. and the Connecticut Emerging Infections Program. Roza’s interests include harm reduction, vaccine-preventable disease, emerging infections, and field epidemiology. Her career goals include pursuing a DrPH in community health and infectious disease epidemiology, and serving as an epidemiologist at a public agency. Stipend provided by the Alameda County Public Health Department. Preceptors - Dr. Sandra Huang & Dr. Jane Martin

Cal-EIS Fellows 2011–2012

Sharon Brummitt, MPH

Sharon completed her second Fellowship with Santa Cruz County Department of Public Health. She completed her MPH at the University of Texas School of Public Health. For her MPH thesis, she completed an epidemiologic study on cryptosporidiosis. She completed her practicum and was hired as an epidemiologist with Dallas County Health and Human Services where she participated with case investigations of Cryptosporidiosis and West Nile Virus, outbreak investigations, and surveillance for the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Sharon will pursue her PhD in epidemiology and would like to become an EIS officer with the CDC. Stipend provided by the Public Health & Health Services Block Grant.

Preceptor – Dr. Poki Stewart Namkung

Abigail Kroch, PhD, MPH

Abigail completed her Fellowship with Contra Costa County Public Health Department. MPH at UC Berkeley concentrating in Epidemiology. Before she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco in the cellular and molecular biology, she did her doctoral work in biology and biophysics at Johns Hopkins University. She has worked for the Center for Weight and Health at UC Berkeley, carrying out data collection at California public schools and data analysis for several child nutrition intervention evaluations. She did her MPH thesis comparing nutrition and physical activity behaviors in students of varied acculturation. She plans to work in epidemiology and community health assessment. Stipend provided by the Contra Costa County Public Health Department. Preceptor – Dr. Wendel Brunner

Danny Kwon, MPH

Danny Kwon completed his Fellowship with CDPH’s Environmental Health Investigations Branch. He received his MPH at the Loma Linda University School of Public Health in Environmental/Occupational Health and  Epidemiology. During his field practicum project, Danny worked on an epidemiologic study evaluating the use of Betel quid with Oral Cancer rates in Cambodia through spatial analyses of the exposure and disease. Prior to the start of the Fellowship, Danny worked as an Environmental Health Specialist with the Riverside County Department of Environmental Health. He is very interested in understanding how environmental factors affect health and disease, and would like to pursue a career as an Environmental Epidemiologist at a local or state health  department in the state of California. Stipend provided by the CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch. Preceptor – Dr. Daniel Smith

Alexander Marr, MPH

Alex completed his Fellowship with Alameda County Department of Public Health. He received his MPH in epidemiology at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. As a participant in Tulane’s Masters Internationalist Program, Alex served with the US Peace Corps in Botswana from 2009-2011. His experience in Botswana focused on coordinating and planning HIV and AIDS programs with local organizations in the Kanye Administrative Authority. With his epidemiology background, he was able to strengthen district-level data collection and management techniques that allowed the districts to use localized data in order to actively monitor activities and produce strategically targeted annual plans. After his Fellowship, Alex is interested in pursuing a PhD in epidemiology and hopefully to work at a city/county-level health department or for the CDC. In the future, Alex would like to use his training and experience in international development and public health projects. Stipend provided by the Alameda County Department of Public Health. Preceptor – Dr. Jane Martin

Mina Mohammadi, MPH

Mina completed her second year Fellowship with CDPH’s Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Mina obtained her MPH from UC Davis with a concentration in General Public Health. During her studies, she worked under the auspices of the Veteran Immigrant and Refugee Trauma Institute of Sacramento on a seed project conducting a mental health needs assessment of Afghan immigrants living in Northern California. Her previous experiences in public health include interning at a county health department, a non-profit organization and a community health clinic. Mina plans to work as a health program epidemiologist in the public or private sector. Stipend provided by the Healthy Communities Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Neil Maizlish & Pam Ford-Keach

Jaspreet Samra, MPH

Jaspreet completed her second Fellowship with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. She completed her MPH in Epidemiology & Biostatistics at USC. During her first fellowship year with CDPH Safe and Active Communities Branch, she worked in the Injury Surveillance & Epidemiology Section. While assisting with other Injury Control programs, her main project focused on monitoring and analyzing data for the FCANS (Fatal Child Abuse and Neglect Surveillance) Program’s statewide Reconciliation Audit. Jaspreet’s goals include advancing her academics in Public Health and being an epidemiologist serving at the state or national level. Stipend provided by the Office of Statewide Health & Planning Development. Preceptor – Dr. Merry Holliday- Hanson

Tamerin Scott, DVM, MPH

Tamerin completed her Fellowship with Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. She received her Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, CA. She practiced small animal veterinary medicine in The Bay Area for two years while completing her Master’s in Public Health from the University of Minnesota. Her interests are in zoonotic diseases, especially disease control and prevention in developing countries. Tamerin has also done a fair amount of international work in Morocco, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay, and Mexico. After completing her Cal-EIS fellowship, she plans to get a fulltime veterinary public health job. Stipend provided by the Los Angeles County Department Public Health. Preceptor – Dr. Karen Ehnert

Gail Sondermeyer, MPH

Gail completed her MPH from the University of California, Berkeley concentrating in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology. Her previous experience in public health includes interning with an international medical non-profit in Uganda and working on an HPV and cervical cancer surveillance program with the CDPH STD Control Branch. For her MPH thesis, she analyzed the results of a statewide survey of CA physicians regarding the HPV vaccine. Gail’s goals include becoming an EIS officer with the CDC and pursuing a career in infectious disease epidemiology. Stipend provided by the Office of Statewide Health and Planning Department (OSHPD). Preceptors – Dr. Merry Holliday-Hanson & Dr. Holly Hoegh

Cal-EIS Fellows 2010–2011

Sharon Brummitt, MPH

Sharon completed her MPH at the University of Texas School of Public Health. For her MPH thesis, she completed an epidemiologic study on cryptosporidiosis. She completed her practicum and was hired as an epidemiologist with Dallas County Health and Human Services where she participated with case investigations of Cryptosporidiosis and West Nile Virus, outbreak investigations, and surveillance for the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

Sharon plans to pursue her PhD in epidemiology and become an EIS officer with the CDC. Stipend provided by the Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Poki Stewart Namkung

Leah Carlon, MPH

Leah completed her second year Fellowship within Solano County Public Health. Before that, she completed her MPH in Epidemiology & Biostatistics at USC. During her first fellowship year, she has been working on a wide variety of projects within Solano County including H1N1 emergency response, outbreak investigations, infant mortality analysis, STD tracking and analysis, and intern supervision. She plans to continue working as an Epidemiologist at the local level before obtaining a PhD. Stipend provided by the Solano County Department of Public Health. Preceptors – Jill Cook & Dr. Michael Stacey

Mina Mohammadi, MPH

Mina obtained her MPH from UC Davis with a concentration in General Public Health. During her studies, she worked under the auspices of the Veteran Immigrant and Refugee Trauma Institute of Sacramento on a seed project conducting a mental health needs assessment of Afghan immigrants living in Northern California. Her previous experiences in public health include interning at a county health department, a non-profit organization and a community health clinic. Mina plans to work as a health program epidemiologist in the public or private sector. Stipend provided by the Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Cassius Lockett

Elizabeth Rodgers, MA, MSPH

Elizabeth completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. She received her Master of Science degree in Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her interests are in the social determinants of health, particularly obesity and chronic diseases. Prior to her public health graduate program, Elizabeth served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan where she developed and implemented nutrition education and anemia-prevention programs for young pregnant women. She has also worked as a Peace Corps trainer in Washington, DC and as an administrator for a USAID maternal health program based in Afghanistan. She received an MA in philosophy at the University of Texas in 2008. Elizabeth settled in California, where she plans to pursue a career with the state in program planning and evaluation for chronic disease prevention. Stipend provided by the Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptors – Pam Ford-Keach & Dr. Jillian Martin

Jaspreet Samra, MPH

Jaspreet completed her MPH in Epidemiology & Biostatistics at USC. As part of her practicum, she assisted with research study design and analysis for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She recently served as an intern with the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where she managed data and conducted research on psychosocial outcomes among childhood cancer survivors. Jaspreet’s goals include advancing her academics in Public Health and being an epidemiologist serving at the state or national level. Stipend provided by the Public Health & Health Services Block Grant. Preceptor – Dr. Steve Wirtz

Cal-EIS Fellows 2009–2010

Paul Adamson, MPH

Paul completed his MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC Berkeley. He served as a Public Health Research Institute (PHRI) Intern in India, in which he performed data collection and conducted hospital-based chart reviews in the field. Paul has a strong interest in infectious disease epidemiology and his long-term goal is to work as a medical epidemiologist.

Stipend provided by the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Preceptor – Dr. Jeffrey D. Klausner

Leah Carlon, MPH

Leah completed her Fellowship with Solano County Department of Public Health. She completed her MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at USC, Los Angeles. During her time as a student she analyzed SEER data of Non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma for her research project. Leah plans to obtain a PhD and enter the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service. Stipend provided by the Solano County Department of Public Health. Preceptors – Jill Cook & Dr. Michael Stacey

Catherine Gilmore Zarate, MPH

Catherine completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s MCAH Division. She has a MPH from UC Berkeley, with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health. She worked for eight years with the Sacramento County Public Health Department in which she conducted epidemiologic surveys, program planning, and community outreach and intervention evaluation and worked on various health issues. Catherine plans to work as an epidemiologist at a state or local health department. Stipend provided by the CDPH MCAH Division. Preceptors – Dr. Michael Curtis & Dr. Chris Krawczyk

Kate Kelsey, MPH

Kate completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Environmental Health Investigations Branch. She completed her master’s degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC Berkeley. During her time as a student she served as a Graduate Student Researcher with UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, where she analyzed complex survey designs. Kate’s goals focus on becoming a biostatistician/epidemiologist at a local or state health department. Stipend provided by the CDPH Environmental Health Investigations Branch. Preceptor – Dr. Daniel Smith

Darryl Kong, MPH

Darryl completed his Fellowship with CDPH’s Tuberculosis Branch. He completed his MPH with an emphasis on Infectious Disease at UC Berkeley. His experience includes work as a Research Assistant with the California Emerging Infections Program where he gained first-hand experience with disease surveillance systems. Darryl also served as an intern with Thailand’s Field Epidemiology Training Program where he engaged in outbreak investigations and fieldwork. Darryl plans to focus on a career in disease surveillance, either at the local, federal or international level. Stipend provided by the CDPH Tuberculosis Branch. Preceptor – Dr. James Watt

Sanaa Shabbir, MPH

Sanaa completed her Fellowship with the Office of Statewide Health Planning & Development. She received her master’s degree in Epidemiology at UCLA. She has worked as a volunteer Diabetes Health Educator with the UC Davis Medical Center student-run Shifa Clinic. Sanaa served as an Intern with the Los Angeles County DPH where she conducted research and analysis on childhood obesity among Asian and Pacific Islander Students in Los Angeles County. Sanaa’s goals include being an epidemiologist leader at the federal or international level. Stipend provided by the Office of Statewide Health Planning & Development. Preceptors – Dr. Merry Holliday-Hanson & Dr. Joseph Parker

Allison Stone, MPH

Allison completed her Fellowship with CDPH’s Center for Infectious Disease. She received her master’s degree in Epidemiology at UC Davis and has a strong interest in infectious disease control and prevention and obesity. She has worked as a Staff Research Associate with the California Animal Health & Food Safety Laboratory (UC Davis) where she developed and validated a PCR assay for blue tongue virus in sheep. Alison desires a career in epidemiology at CDPH. Stipend provided by the CDPH Center for Infectious Disease. Preceptor – Dr. Gil Chavez

Casey Tsui, MPH

Casey completed his Fellowship with Marin County Department of Health & Human Services. He received his master’s degree in Epidemiology & Biostatistics at UC Berkeley. He previously served as a Public Health Preparedness Intern with the City of Berkeley Public Health Division. Some of his duties included analyzing datasets for influenza and pneumonia emergency room cases to develop a baseline rate of hospitalization for pandemic influenza preparedness. Casey plans to eventually obtain his PhD in epidemiology and work in the public sector. Stipend provided by the Marin County Department of Health & Human Services. Preceptor – Rochelle Ereman

Megan Wall, MPH

Megan completed Fellowship with CDPH’s Physical Activity and Nutrition Branch. She received her master’s degree at Emory Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, GA. Her previous experience includes a summer practicum with CARE Sierra Leone (SL) Child Survival Project (CSP) in Kabala, in which she planned and conducted training; performed fieldwork and analysis for program evaluation. She completed an internship with the CDC Physical Activity and Health Department. Megan has a strong interest in nutrition and physical activity. Megan’s goals include obtaining a PhD in nutrition epidemiology and working for CDPH. Stipend provided by the CDPH Physical Activity and Nutrition Branch.

Preceptor – Dr. Katie Tharp

Cal-EIS Fellows 2008–2009

Catheryn Salibay, MPH

Catheryn’s major project is the coordination of a statewide hospital medical records audit of prenatal records to evaluate screening and prevention for vaccine-preventable disease. Catheryn is in the second year of the Fellowship, having started in 2007. Stipend provided by the CDPH DCDC Immunization Branch. Preceptors – Kathleen Winter & Dr. Howard Backer

Olympia Anderson, MPH

Olympia completed her master’s degree in Epidemiology at Florida A&M University, and has a strong interest and prior public health experience in birth defects. Stipend provided by the CDPH MCAH Division, Birth Defects Monitoring Program. Preceptors – Kate Cordell & Dr. Marcia Ehinger

Cal-EIS Fellows 2007–2008

Jenny Brodsky, MPH

Jenny’s major project at the CDPH MCAH was an analysis of hospitalization for asthma prior to pregnancy and perinatal outcomes. Jenny has obtained a job as an epidemiologist working for CDPH STD Branch. Stipend provided by CDPH MCAH. Preceptor - Dr. Mike Curtis

Kathreen Khavari, MPH