I am a bilingual public health/healthcare professional, with 9 years of experience as epidemiologist, and background working as a medical laboratory scientist at hospital settings and researcher and professor at university settings.
I graduated from college with a concentration in clinical laboratory sciences from my home country, Colombia. Following a passion for the field of infection diseases, I began a master’s in clinical microbiology, while wearing different roles as medical lab scientist, researcher, and professor for a few years. In 2005 I came to the US, and decided to combine my background with a growing interest in epidemiology and started the MPH program at UKY. I qualified for a position as practicum student within the Infectious Diseases Branch where I led a project to analyze the epidemiology of Tuberculosis in KY, which became my initial connection with the state health department in 2012 and allowed me to start a growing career which remains today.
Currently, I am Epidemiologist III/Lead Epidemiologist for the Office of Vital Statistics at the KDPH. In addition to the normal duties on data analyses and management, I am now leading projects associated to data visualization for the vital statistics information in Kentucky, modernization of data collection applications for births, deaths, stillbirths, marriage, divorce, and abortion data, and some research projects associated to vitals data with other areas from the DPH, among others, in addition to supervising and leading the work of two more epidemiologists in my area.
The Office of Vital Statistics – Cabinet for Health and Family Services (ky.gov)