BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Candidate for Member-at-Large
Allison Aiello, PhD, MS
John G. Searle Assistant Professor of Public Health
Assistant Professor of Epidemiology
University of Michigan School of Public Health
Each year, the SER annual meeting sets the bar high by calling for new achievements that address the most pressing challenges in epidemiology. Our most pressing challenges are highly complex; they cross many disciplines and cultures and require innovations in methodology for bridging disciplinary boundaries, human interactions that foster crosscultural exchange, and ultimately, the conceptualization of broad frameworks that can inform health policy decisions and impact health. More than ever, there is a need for communication and cross-dialogue, the mixing of ideas and the minds, and most importantly, the mixing of people with diverse backgrounds but a common interest in epidemiology. SER can serve as a confluence point for meeting this growing demand for exchange, but to do so effectively, it has to continue to institute specific policies and practices. First, it should continue to champion interdisciplinary sessions that focus on the development of methods that cross boundaries and integrate multi-level information from the many branches of epidemiology. Second, SER must continue to support diversity in epidemiology and work towards increasing participation among underrepresented minorities as SER members and annual conference attendees. Last, SER should bolster its educational efforts for describing the process by which epidemiological research findings inform policy and ultimately improve population health.
I received a MS in Environmental Health Sciences and Engineering from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill-School of Public Health in 1998. From 1998-99 I was an Emerging Infectious Diseases Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After graduating with my PhD in Epidemiology from Columbia University in 2003, I was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Michigan-School of Public Health for two years where I studied social determinants of health with a focus on infectious diseases. I am currently John G. Searle Assistant Professor of Public Health and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan-School of Public Health. My research focuses on socioeconomic and race/ethnic disparities in infectious diseases and the relationship between infection and chronic diseases. In addition, I conduct studies testing the efficacy of infection prevention measures in the community setting. I am devoted to issues of minority recruitment to the sciences as well as promoting diversity as a member of the American College of Epidemiology Minority Affairs Committee and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.