CSTE President Angela Dunn had her “Public Health” epiphany as a young medical student. During an ER shift, she encountered a young man with late-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He had no health insurance and was essentially told there was nothing the doctors or staff could do for him.

“I understood at that moment that I needed to go into more of a public health policy realm to affect change for people rather than just one-on-one patient care,” she said. “I knew that my interest and skill set would be better used at ensuring people like this gentleman got the care they needed and were diagnosed early so that they could go about their lives in a healthy way.”

Angela saw epidemiology as a natural transition from the clinical sciences she was studying, due to its data-driven methodologies and the detective-like mindset it takes to succeed at the job.

“[Epidemiology] really does speak to the science side of my brain, but then also that desire to make a bigger change at a larger population level really excites me,” she said.

After many years as Utah’s State Epidemiologist, Dunn is now the Executive and Medical Director of the Salt Lake County Health Department. A longtime member of CSTE, she was elected President in June 2022 for the 2022-23 term.

Like the CSTE Presidents before her, Angela has developed and crafted a few presidential priorities to spotlight during her term. Her first priority, “Formalizing Cross Jurisdictional Partnerships,” focuses on maximizing CSTE’s ability to bring together epis to share best practices experiences to help each other out.

“Having that group of people be able to say, ‘Well, here's how I deal with it,’ is really important,” Angela said. “But beyond that, it really is just that sharing of best practices within applied epi across state lines, because when we're able to bounce ideas off each other, that's how we make sure we're all practicing the best public health we can.”

The genesis of this priority came from the isolating early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, where Angela, then still a State Epidemiologist, noticed how much her and her colleagues in other states relied on each other to both keep up morale and share resources.

“It was nice knowing that there was a group of people out there that definitely had your back and understood what you were going through.”

If the community of epis is at the heart of Angela’s first presidential priority, then the community at large is at the heart of her second priority, “Equipping Epidemiologist to Practice Epidemiology WITH Rather Than ON Communities.”

Traditionally applied epidemiologists are very disease focused, describing how a particulate disease could spread, risk factors, etc. However, Angela feels that COVID-19 highlighted that since its typically the same communities that are at the highest risk for many public health diseases, epis need to “work with” communities and not just “talk at” them.

“As epidemiologists, we don't want our data to just sit unused in a spreadsheet,” Angela said. “We want it to be used to improve the health of the community. To do that, the communities must trust what we're doing. It's about incorporating a community perspective into our applied epidemiology, so that we can bring the whole community up and not just talk about one disease.”

While Angela admits her priorities are lofty, she is certain they are achievable in part due to the expertise and resiliency of CSTE members. One story from her pre-COVID days as the Utah State Epidemiologist specifically came to her mind that connects those attributes with both of her priorities.

In 2019, many Utah residents were visiting a camp in Jackson, Wyoming, when a rabid bat exposure occurred. In a very timely matter, Angela had to work and share resources with the Wyoming State Epidemiologist (whom she knew from CSTE) to identify all the individuals at risk, as well as work with the community to disseminate facts and not induce panic. During that time, communication between the two states was easy thanks to the connections that CSTE fosters. That efficiency also translated working with the community in a constructive manner.

“That's part of the bread and butter of applied epidemiology,” she said. “Working across state lines is to be able to work quickly, and that happens better when you know the people on the other side.”

“And honestly, it's because CSTE brings us together.”

Angela Dunn, MD, MPH is Executive Director of the Salt Lake City County Health Department, and CSTE President for the 2022-2023 term. For information on CSTE’s Presidential Priorities Award, which is given at the CSTE Conference, please visit https://www.cste.org/page/presidential-priorities-award.