Emily Hansen: Making the links

As an M.P.H. student in the Environmental Health Sciences program, Emily Hansen took an air pollution course that she remembers as "challenging."

But it came in handy during a fellowship at the CDC researching air pollution and asthma. There, Hansen looked at ways to connect environmental hazards and chronic health problems in order to build a framework for future research hypotheses.

Hansen says her experiences at the School of Public Health offered her enormous opportunities.

"When I went into the program I wasn't sure what I wanted to focus on," she says. "It allowed me to be flexible and try out a bunch of different areas. It put me in a place where I can work effectively with different professionals."

Hansen received her M.P.H. in 2002 and worked at the Minnesota Department of Health developing a program in birth defect surveillance. That experience—and her master's thesis on environmental and public health surveillance—helped her land her CDC fellowship.

(Updated: June 2009)

Environmental Health Sciences