BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Candidate for President-Elect
Polly A. Marchbanks, PhD
Team Leader, Fertility Epidemiology Studies, Division of Reproductive Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Atlanta, GA
SER changed my life. While completing a Ph.D. in epidemiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health, I was a student in SER's 1984 Dissertation Workshop. The critique of my research (a case-control study of risk factors for ectopic pregnancy) was in-spiring and, at the ensuing annual meeting, I was recruited to CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a two-year post-doctoral program in applied epidemiology. I entered the EIS in 1985 and later became the first woman and first non-physician to serve as Chief of the EIS (1991-95).
While Chief, I led the training of EIS Officers and supervised the administration of over 300 epidemic aid investigations that helped control public health emergencies worldwide, including hantavirus in the southwestern United States; E. coli O157:H7 from undercooked hamburgers at a fast food restaurant chain; cryptosporidiosis in the Milwaukee water supply, sickening 400,000 persons; devastation from Hurricane Andrew; and a massive refugee crisis in Burundi.
The central focus of my career has been epidemiologic research in the fields of injuries, sexually transmitted infections, and women's health. I am a Principal Investigator of a multi-center, NIH sponsored, case-control study on oral contraceptives and breast cancer (the NICHD Women's CARE Study). I am a Co-Investigator of a prospective intervention study on contraceptive safety among women with HIV (the PROCESS Study). I conducted multiple analyses from a case-control study examining steroid hormones and risk of breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers (the CASH Study), and I led linkage of cases to vital statistics for survival analyses. I collaborated on a prospective cohort study which followed women with tubal sterilization for outcomes such as menstrual function, hysterectomy, and regret about the procedure (the CREST Study). My work includes translation of evidence into policy and practice. CDC's Fertility Epidemiology Studies Team, which I have led since 1995, is adapting WHO's evidence-based family planning guidelines for use in the United States. This will constitute the first federally endorsed guidance for family planning in this country. I have taught epidemiology in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Romania, Moldova, the Republic of Georgia, and China, giving me an appreciation of global challenges. I am a Fellow of CDC's WHO Collaborating Center in Reproductive Health; a member of the Oxford Collaborative Groups on breast, ovarian, and endometrial cancers; and an Editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
These diverse activities have given me a richly satisfying career, and I am grateful to SER for influencing my life in such a positive way. If elected President, I would continue and strengthen SER's emphasis on early-career professionals, and on high quality annual meetings that provide a forum for sharing the latest in epidemiologic methods and research. Also, I would explore strategies to draw individuals to our membership and annual meetings from the many specialty-foci within our discipline and from all points on the professional maturation spectrum (from the student to the professor emeritus). I would encourage collaborations with other domestic and international epidemiologic organizations, and I would always look for ways to better translate our research into practices that have the power to change people's lives. I have been a member of the SER Executive Committee (1996-99), a Local Host for the SER Annual Meeting (2003), and Coordinator and Chair of the SER Late-Breaker Session for the past 17 years. I would be honored to serve as SER President.