June 2019

David H Rehkopf is an Associate Professor in the Division of Primary Care and Population Health, Department of Medicine, School of Medicine at Stanford University. He joined IAPHS in 2016. Follow David on twitter: @drehkopf

Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from, where did you go to graduate school, what makes you jump out of bed each morning?

Most days helping to make breakfast for my kids and get them out the door to school gets me out of bed in the morning, but on the best days it is meeting a friend for a run or a ride before the kids wake up.

How do you define yourself as a population health professional?

I try to fill the space between doing basic social science research and applied work in program evaluation and public policy research. My research products may not always provide an immediate answer of what to do, but I want them to give us ideas on new directions we should head in to improve health, to be followed up by evaluations of what actual works. It is critical to evaluate the impact of what we have done, but we also don’t want to only look at what we have done in the past.

What disciplines do you engage with and are there disciplines that you would like to engage with?

Economics and sociology, now also with molecular biology. I looked over a list of academic disciplines and it was a challenge to find ones that wouldn’t have some positive impact on my work. But for the time being I am not engaging with Astrophysics, although perhaps they would have suggestions about some unmeasured priors for my DAGs.

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Abigail A. Sewell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Emory. They joined IAPHS in 2017. Learn more about Abigail on their website and follow them on twitter: @aasewell

Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from, where did you go to graduate school, what makes you jump out of bed each morning?

I am a poet-activist turned researcher who found a home in the classroom. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia to Afro-Latino and Caribbean parents who met on the dance floors of Brooklyn, New York. I am quite migratory in spirit myself and find it hard to do many of the jobs that bring you stability in this economy. The one thing that will motivate me to sit down for a long period of time is writing. So, I was lucky to get into graduate school right out of undergraduate after majoring in Sociology with a Women’s Studies minor at the University of Florida. I knew, even then, that research was the career for me, but I was not convinced I’d have a future in the academy until I was far along into my graduate studies. I did end up going to graduate school for Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington and received a Ph.D. Minor in Social Science Research Methods.

What makes me jump out of the bed in the morning to this day is either the sun shining bright upon me or, when the sun is hiding or away, the sudden urge to write (not kidding). In all seriousness, I am actually really not a morning person; I prefer to write in the dark with the images of the TV in the background. So, if I am literally jumping out of the bed in the morning, it is because I am almost going to be late to a class I have to teach or an appointment I have to attend.

How do you define yourself as a population health professional?

I am a population health researcher, primarily; and, secondarily, I train students – both graduate and undergraduate – in the principles of population health.

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