She Leads Science - Christy Porucznik

In this episode of She Leads Science, Dr. Liz Joy talks with Dr. Christina “Christy” Porucznik, professor in the Division of Public Health at the University of Utah and Vice Dean for Faculty in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine. Dr. Porucznik reflects on her path as a doctorally trained epidemiologist whose career has crossed nonprofit, government, academic, and public health settings, including service as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service officer. The conversation explores the remarkable breadth of her research, from reproductive and environmental epidemiology to opioid-related research, infectious disease surveillance, COVID-19 household transmission, children’s environmental health, physical activity, and population health. She discusses how rigorous epidemiologic thinking can be applied to complex, real-world problems and how public health communication depends on trust, clarity, and humanity. The episode also highlights her leadership philosophy, mentorship of faculty, support for women in science, and ability to bring humor, generosity, and curiosity to serious work.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome back to She Leads Science. I'm your host, Dr. Liz Joy. Today I am thrilled to be joined by Dr. Christina Prusnik, or Christy, to those of us who are lucky enough to know her. Christy is a professor in the Division of Public Health at the University of Utah and serves as Vice Dean for Faculty in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine. She is a doctorally trained epidemiologist who his career has spanned nonprofit, government, and academic settings, including service as an epidemic intelligence service officer for the CDC at the Utah Department of Health. Her research is remarkable, not only for its quality, but for its range. She has worked across reproductive epidemiology, environmental health, occupational and opioid-related research, infectious disease surveillance, COVID-19 household transmission, children's environmental health, physical activity and sports medicine, two of my favorites, and population health. In 2022, Christy was named Vice Dean for Faculty, a role focused on supporting faculty success, advancement, and leadership across the University of Utah School of Medicine. And today we'll talk about her winding path into public health, how she built such a broad and influential research portfolio, what epidemiologists actually do when nobody is in a pandemic, and how leadership can be serious work without taking yourself too seriously. Christy, welcome to She Leads Science. I am so happy that you're here. Liz, I'm so glad to talk to you today. Excellent, excellent. Well, as is often the case when I am talking to um amazing women uh leaders and scientists like you, we have a lot to cover, so we'll get going. As I mentioned previously, your research has touched on a wide variety of topics. Some would say really wide. Do you describe yourself as a generalist, a methodological problem solver, or just someone who cannot resist an interesting question?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Well, yes, I'm a generalist. I have lots of ideas. I might get distracted by shiny things. And mostly I want to work on science questions that can directly affect people's lives, which means I'm not doing like the super basic genetic stuff, right? I like to ask questions that are more like, hey, how can I reduce my exposure to BPA if I'm eating hummus? Right. So I did an experiment once where we literally made hummus three ways from dried beans, from canned beans that we rinse real well, and from beans that we just dumped into the blender, right? And we fed it to people and measured BPA in their urine before and after, right? This is news you can use. Oh, and by the way, if you use dried beans, it's the lowest exposure BPA. But if you rinse the can of your garbanzo beans until the water runs clear, you're doing a good job at reducing your BPA.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Okay, that that makes me really happy because I'm a can girl when it comes to doing homemade hummus.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah, soaking the beans overnight, girl. Yeah, no, I mean the Instant Pot has revolutionized this kind of thing. Like it it makes cooking from dried beans much more accessible, but still really like I want to be able to tell people things that they can change in their own lives that help them feel like they're doing something to improve their health or to reduce their chemical exposures.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yeah, I love that. Well, uh, you're an epidemiologist. Uh, and epidemiology had a real moment during COVID. Uh, was there a part of you thinking, finally, everybody knows what we do? And maybe another part, oh no, now everyone thinks they know what we do.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yes, all of those things. You know, I was in grad school when 9-11 happened and then all the anthrax attacks. And that's when I feel like people started having some idea of what epidemiology was, because we were like doing anthrax, right? In the pandemic, I did a lot of saying, I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. And dude, I hate being wrong. Um, but what I have learned over my years in academics, especially, is that it's really important to be wrong sometimes, to help model to your students that everybody's wrong sometimes. And this is how you say, okay, we learned. Now we know more, we know better, so we're gonna choose differently. Um, for a lot of COVID-19, especially the first few months, I just felt like I was screaming into the void.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Yeah, you know, I kept saying to my patients, you know, who I was seeing, you know, um, who had either had COVID or were worried about getting COVID, you know, that we called it a novel coronavirus for a reason, you know, because we were all learning about, you know, a virus amongst us, you know, that we'd never seen before.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah, it was um it was quite a thing. I will actually one of my first, possibly my first ever Instagram video, um, was March 13th of 2020, when the university was going out on spring break and we were, you know, suggesting to people that they take their stuff home. And I walked around the division of public health, I was the last one there, and I turned off all the lights and then walked out the door and posted it on Instagram of like, yep. And then I actually went to my kids' school and it was their last day before spring break, too, and I told them to clean out their lockers. And my son was like, Mom, you're being dramatic. And I was like, again, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think you're gonna be back. And so they cleaned out their lockers. My kids did not contribute to any, you know, rotting like lunchboxes at their school. And um, and the teacher said, Are you serious? And I'm like, Yeah, I'm serious. And and you know, my kids didn't go back to school for a year and a half.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah. You know, it reminds me, I was out of town, you know, when the the pandemic was officially called a pandemic. So I fly home and I had an office downtown. And um I never went there for over a year. And I realized at that point I actually never needed anything in that office to do my job. Um, but it was just interesting, you know, because we were hearing now like big tall office buildings, big tall apartments. They were really unsafe and they were the petri dish for COVID. And um, yeah, never went there for over a year.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

So yeah, I can relate. That's super interesting. I had actually gone to University Surplus maybe the week before and um and bought a computer monitor to take home because I don't have an office at home. And I was thinking, uh, I don't like how this is going, right? And um, then I went back to get another monitor so that my kids could do school. And the guy at Surplus was like, a lot of people are buying monitors. What's going on? I'm like, oh yeah, that's that's pretty funny. Um, but it actually reminded me of something that um a wise person you told me um 20 years ago when I was first, I was a young faculty member, like first with small kids, and you said you have to take your laptop home every day because if you don't, someone's gonna puke. Exactly. So, you know, thanks to you. And I still tell people that and they look at me like I'm crazy, and then I realize, oh, other people might have another computer at home or something. But um it's so interesting how we wind up thinking and working and living, and how these spaces cross over. And how one of the other things that I try to really convey to young faculty is thinking about where you want to draw your boundaries because it's hard to put them up later, like it's easier to do when you start. But I was digressing there.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Well, you know, I think our boundaries were kind of shattered. You know, our homework batteries boundaries were kind of shattered during COVID because, you know, we were just working, we were working from home, you know, work was at home. Um, you know, as we tried to um isolate before we were protected, you know, to uh a certain extent through the vaccines. So yeah, there were a lot of learnings there that continue to this day. And um, and yes, that advice about the laptop is still true to this day. I schlepped my laptop all over the place um because you just never know when you're not gonna get back to where you once were. And of course, those were the days too when there wasn't a cloud for us to upload all our work where we could just access it from any computer anywhere. Um, so I don't know, maybe it's not quite as important today, but I don't know. I'm I'm still a carry my laptop around kind of gal. Yeah, me too. So moving on, um you are known by many people as being extremely smart and also very fun. And I'm curious, you know, how has that combination shaped the way you lead, mentor, and build teams?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

It's both a blessing and a curse because um some people don't take me seriously. And and I think that this is particularly a problem for women, um, that you know, for a long time, like, oh, you're too young, and then suddenly you're too old. So there was like, I don't know, women are like avocados, they're ready for like 32 seconds, is they're exactly the right time, I guess. Um, but although now like I mostly have gray hair, I still have a very youthful affect and a lot of energy. And I've found that what I have to do is in certain situations is really modify my demeanor so that people will pay attention when they need to. And um, and that's usually if I'm first meeting people, right? Because once they know, then they can look past my folksy aphorisms and you know hilarious things that I say and realize that there's a lot going on in there, and it's okay to not be so serious all the time. Um, so this is it's been something that's been hard to navigate. But on the upside, I think that over time it's helped me get really great students who want to work with me. Um, it makes it easier for me people, me to get people to be on my work teams because sometimes they'll say things like, I don't care what you're doing, I'll do it with you. Right? Like, I trust you, and this is gonna be good, and it's gonna be fun, and it's gonna be efficient, and you're not gonna waste my time. And this is just it's part of my personality. And I it's hard, it would be hard for somebody else to try to emulate me. And I get that. And there have been times where maybe I've applied for something and and I didn't get it, and then maybe I saw who that got into that role, and I thought, oh, oh, if that was the energy you were looking for, no, you didn't want me. And and that's okay, because not everyone fits in every space.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Yeah, I mean, you know, we've known each other for more than 20 years, and you know, I think you're incredibly approachable, and I think that's what students see in you as well. Um, but I was I was reminded, you know, and preparing for our conversation today, that we literally did our first study together within weeks of you joining the faculty at the University of Utah Department of Family and Preventive Medicine when we studied um the carriage of Neisseria meningititis in student athletes, you know, and their understanding of um why they should get the vaccine, why they didn't get the vaccine, what the carriage rates were. Um, and then I think you went on to present it at an epidemiologic meeting.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

I did. And there were some other things that came out of that. You know, every time you gather data from humans, you learn things. And so we had asked on a questionnaire, we asked them if they had taken antibiotics recently, for example, because if we're trying to study the carriage of a bacteria in their throat, we need to know if they've taken antibiotics. And I remember people would check yes, and then we asked them to write in what antibiotic it was. And people wrote things like ibuprofen. They people wrote in ortho tricycline, that's a birth control pill, right? And these are college students. And so that highlighted something else that we didn't really pursue, but health literacy, you know, is a thing for everyone. Uh we would presume if we say, Oh, did you take an antibiotic? People would know what antibiotics are. Um, but even in that relatively well-educated population, it was a challenge. Um I I've been told recently by some pretty powerful people that they think that I'm um scary and unapproachable, which kind of blows my mind. But then I reflected upon it and talked to some other people and realized that when you have uh a woman in a position of power who is confident in her role and knows what she's doing, that if someone else feels less confident in their role, then that can be really intimidating. And so I really took that as an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with those individuals because I I don't want them to not want to talk to me, right? Like I help people solve difficult problems these days. And I want them to have a really low bar for calling me, right? I don't want them to be like, oh, I don't want to talk to her. She's just gonna mock me because I'm not gonna mock them. I'm gonna help them. And so that was it was an interesting growth opportunity. You never know where the useful feedback is gonna come.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Yeah, it reminds me of um, you know, when I first moved to Utah and I was working in a clinic, and my clinic manager came up to me after I'd been working there for a couple of months and and told me that the staff were afraid of me, you know, that they didn't want to talk to me. And and again, I was just so taken aback by that because I was just trying so hard to be friendly and kind and respectful and you know, I'm all about the team. I mean, you know, you know that as well as anyone. Yeah. And uh, and I said, Well, well, what is it about me, you know, that that makes me, you know, intimidating to the staff? And her response was, Well, you're so tall. You know, like and and you make direct eye contact with people. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh. You're like, I'm Midwestern nice. What are you talking about? I guess I'm gonna wear flats.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

You know, actually, during the pandemic, I wound up leading a bunch of big meetings on Zoom because I was the president of the academic senate for the whole University of Utah. And so it meant that a lot of people only knew me from Zoom. And then when we started gathering in person again, the number of people who said to me, Oh, I thought you were taller. Because, and I would say, really, you know, I'm a very average height for a woman, and they'd say, But you have such a presence. I'm like, all right, well, I can own that Zoom room.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Absolutely, absolutely. I did love that though when we met people, you know, afterwards. And yeah, you know, they were taller, they were sure. Yeah, you're like, that was pretty funny, actually. It was like getting to know them all over again. Oh, totally, totally. Well, I think this is a good segue to ask you the question, you know, about did you always imagine yourself in academic leadership? Or did that kind of evolve as people kept handing handing you, you know, kind of increasingly complicated problems?

SPEAKER_00 17:10

This is not the career that I anticipated I would have. I really thought that my career was going to be as a scientist at a government agency, like at the US EPA or at the CDC. I'd worked both of those places. Um, that was the areas of research that I liked. It was interesting. And that's not what came to pass when I came to the university for a lot of lifestyle reasons, really. That my uh husband um worked for the Forest Service. And if I had tried to stay as a PhD scientist in government, I would have probably wound up in DC or Atlanta. And that would have been really tough for our lives, right? So once I got to the university, I realized I actually really like the teaching part. And so I'm like, okay, academics, I got that. And I've been really successful in research over the years. And over time, I have realized that I'm never gonna get a Nobel Prize, right? I mean, there's no Nobel Prize in epidemiology, but even so, research is not my passion. And instead, the place where I can make the biggest impact right now is optimizing the system of the university to help support the missions, right? To help it be a good place for students, to help people whose research really is their passion be able to do that. And so that's what I'm doing. And it blows my mind.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah, I didn't think that, you know, uh my life as a family and sports medicine physician, you know, would evolve, you know, into leading research networks like I did, you know, at the university or leading um community health uh and outcomes research at Intermountain Health. So likewise, and I think, you know, some of it is um there's a bit of an opportunistic, you know, the experience or the opportunity comes along and you take it, you know, you take that leap of faith. Um and sometimes it's more strategic. Um and you say, I want to do this for that reason. Um, but it's personally in my life, it's been great to do both.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Yeah, and it it's funny to me to think about the fact that when I was first in college, the message was, well, you know, you're good at school, so you should either be a doctor or an engineer. And I don't particularly like sick people. I always thought I didn't really like people that much, so I should be an engineer. So I went to school for engineering and then wound up shifting into epidemiology and public health. And now look at me, the vice dean of a school of medicine as a PhD. And I still don't like sick people, by the way. Um, so that was probably a good choice. But what I've realized is spending all this time observing sort of organizational dynamics and the way that people work in systems, that I'm applying some of those things I learned in engineering classes to organizational psychology and how we operate this big system of the university. And so it all kind of comes around.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah, I mean, I guess system science kind of lives in engineering, you know, and then has broad application to other areas. And increasingly we're seeing, you know, system science as a way to reduce medical errors, for example, you know, in medicine. Um, and realizing that it's not the person making the air, it's the system, you know, is not allowing that person to be safe and effective. So um, you know, I'm a big, I'm a big fan of system science. So uh, you know, applying those engineering principles and other domains is like so important.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Well, and it's like what we say in public health about making the healthy choice the easy choice, you know, making that the default choice. And how can we set up the system so that it is working for people and working for the outcome that we want rather than people working to feed the system? Yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Um, you know, certainly one area of science that you have been really involved in, um, and I think is probably somewhat reflective of some of your colleagues as well in the division of public health, has been reproductive and environmental epidemiology. And um, you know, you and I both live in Utah. It's an interesting place. To live, you know, because it's a big fish bowl, um, which means, you know, we have temperature inversions and we have a lot of air pollution in our ambient atmosphere. So I'm just wondering if, you know, in your work in reproductive epidemiology and exposure assessment, you know, if there's something you've learned about exposures, you know, that Utah women, and it maybe it applies, I think it probably applies more broadly, but Utah women contemplating pregnancy should be concerned about.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

The main thing that I tend to talk to people about with reducing exposures when they're thinking about becoming pregnant and when they have young children, is thinking about the stuff they do voluntarily. Um, don't microwave in plastic. Like, does that's I know that seems crazy. If you look around their kitchen, there's so much plastic. And even if you're storing food in plastic or your kids are carrying their lunches like in plastic containers, I mean, don't beat yourself up about that. No one wants to give a kid a glass container. But there's no reason that you have to put that plastic container in the microwave because that's just a really great way to expose yourself to a bunch of chemicals, right? The other thing that when I look around and I see choices that people make about things like personal care products, people use a lot of personal care products. And it's really hard to know what all of those various chemicals, especially in the mixtures that they're being applied, might be doing to your body. And so for anyone who is contemplating pregnancy and wanting to reduce their chemical burden, that's a place that I suggest that they start. You know, think about what things could you not do that you're doing voluntarily, right? You still want to protect yourself from the sun. So maybe wear a sun shirt instead of a sunscreen that has parabens in it, right? Do you really need all that makeup? Do you need fragrance in your products or can you go without a fragrance? Because there's a lot of endocrine disruptors and perfumes. So those are things for people to think about. And I'm not saying, you know, don't use personal care products, but just recognize that every choice you make is accumulating your chemical burden. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

And and here in Utah, I think, you know, another area that I'll just add to this, because some of the work has been done in Utah has been around air pollution, you know, and the risk of um particularly um first trimester loss and premature delivery. And um there for people who want to exercise outdoors, great. I'm a big fan of outdoor exercise. I'm gonna do some when you and I get done talking today. But, you know, don't do it during the morning commute or in the evening commute when, you know, particle pollution tailpipe emissions are at their absolutely highest level. Or don't do it during the heat of the day, you know, in the middle of summer when ground level ozone is at its highest levels. So again, it's the same, the same idea. It's around personal choices to try and limit your exposure to you know what we know are some harmful, you know, chemicals and pollutants that people can be exposed to.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

I agree 100% on that. And the thing with air pollution is that since the air is all around us, I think it feels farther away to people. And yet, if they're really serious about reducing the stress in their bodies, like the chemical stress in your bodies, then reducing your exposures to um ground level ozone and particulates is an important thing to think about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Well, this is a good segue too, because I think you're a really good science communicator. I mean, you have always explained things to me in a way that um, as a non-epidemiologist, um, you know, having taken one semester of epidemiology in my life, how can I understand it? But, you know, you talk to a lot of people, you know, whether it's leaders in a healthcare system or or others, um, but how do you make the science meaningful and understandable for, you know, not just policymakers and and clinicians, but also individuals and families?

SPEAKER_00 26:29

This is one of our hardest challenges. And I'm gonna say one way that I do it is by using completely outrageous examples for things. So when I'm teaching epidemiology and maybe the outcome, I want to talk about how we measure some outcome, like a disease. And I like to talk about toe cancer. Okay, not so much of a thing that we really worry about, toe cancer, but importantly, probably no one in my class like had their grandpa die last week from toe cancer. And that's important because if they're not distracted by mental noise of for what they know about the outcome that I'm talking about, they can think more about how would we measure this? And I I really started thinking about this when um our textbook used a lot of examples for miscarriage. And then I encountered someone who was in my class who had experienced that, and it was really wrenching for her that then that all the examples were about this that was triggering. And I thought, why are we doing this? Because we're, you know, wrapping emotion and experience up with something else. So outrageous examples that don't trigger people's emotions. But the other thing is about asking questions to try to understand where someone is coming from when they ask you a question, right? Um, people call me all the time and say things like, um, hey, I'm at Costco right now, they're giving flu shots. Should I get one? And then I say, Why are you even asking me this? You know what I'm gonna say. And they say, Yeah, but I just want someone to tell me. And I say, Yeah, get in line, get a flu shot. Right? They're like, Thanks. And you know, that's a different kind of communication that we can have. Um, I want to talk about something else about science. And this is something I've been thinking about for a while. And for people who are scientists, science is about questions and uncertainty, and we know things. And the part that we forget as scientists is that for people who are not scientists, science isn't about questions, it's about answers. And for most of the general population, if they think about science, they think about some multiple choice test in high school, right? So it's all about answers. And so when scientists communicate about questions and uncertainty, it they lose their audience if their audience is expecting answers. And I think this is our fundamental disconnect.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

I love that so much. And I think you are spot on that yes, people expect science to be about the answers, whereas you're right, we think of it all with respect to questions. And I remind people that you know, we throw that term research around, research, you know, but it's about research, researching, re-looking, re-looking at the same problem in a different way in order to, you know, get to a different answer and a different recommendation. So um, yeah, I I talk about that a lot, that we call it researching. And um, and that involves asking questions in order to get to an answer that will impact, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Well, and this is part of, as I say, being wrong. That we have a hypothesis, we have an idea, we gather some data, and then we might find out, oh no, that's actually not how it works. And then we try something else with a new hypothesis. That is what science is. But if people think that it's all shiny, I've just discovered the cure for something, then they feel like what they're trying to do isn't science or it's not approachable. And because they feel like they don't have the answers. But guess what? We don't have the answers.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah. Well, you know, part of the audience, you know, for this podcast, you know, is in fact learners, right? Um, whether they are high school students, college students, graduate students, medical students, residents, fellows, I guess, you know, every day is a school day, you know, for all of us. We should all be learning throughout our lives. Um, but I want to talk a little bit about, you know, the fact that, you know, you are you are a little different than a lot of scientists, you know, who spend, you know, their entire careers, you know, studying um, you know, the relationship between running shoes and ankle mechanics. I mean, right, we know that. Um, so they dive very deep in a specific area, you know, but you've gone deep in methods and applied them broadly. Um, and obviously we've we've already talked on more than one occasion in the last 30 minutes about the breadth of your research. But, you know, share with the group of learners, you know, who may be thinking of science as a career, um, that what are the advantages of the kind of career that you have developed and nurtured?

SPEAKER_00 32:02

There have been a lot of topical shifts in my career that I couldn't have predicted. And in part, it's because you have to pay the mortgage. And there I was going to work on environmental exposures and health. And then it turned out that the problem that needed working on was about um drug overdose. And so I was like, all right, I'm an epidemiologist, I know how to measure things, right? I can count something that's happening in a population, I can make comparisons, I can try to figure out what's different between this group and this group. And I can learn. So I learned a whole lot about drugs. And then suddenly I was one of the nation's experts in drug overdose epidemiology. And all the while in my head, I'm like, but I do environment and infectious disease. And this is crazy, but this is what people want to pay me to do now. And then I had the opportunity to say, oh, wait, I want to shift back into environment and health. And that kind of got me into reproductive health. So I guess the the moral of this story is not so much to get hung up on the topic, maybe, but thinking about the skills that you're building and the tools that you have. And this has been huge as I've been advising students who are graduating over the past couple, three years. And they say things like, Oh, I have a degree in public health. I want to work in public health, and everyone at my local health department just got fired. What am I supposed to do? And then we step back and say, but let's think about what you've learned how to do. You can plan and make a budget. You can plan a program and implement it and evaluate it. And yes, maybe what you wanted to work in was about breastfeeding promotion, but you could plan a program about something else and implement it and evaluate it and keep your skills up and the world will change again and people will realize that public health is important again, and you'll be able to come back to it. And so I think it's thinking about what you can do rather than what you can't do that will help open a path in front of you, even when it seems like there aren't any.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

I would I would guess that that's also advice that you would give to junior faculty in your role, you know, as the vice dean for faculty at the School of Medicine. Um, I think, you know, part of your role involves supporting faculty success. Um and with you know, new faculty coming on board all the time. I'm I'm curious, you know, what do you think they need more of in order to be successful in their roles?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Especially for faculty who are supposed to be combining clinical care and research, you know, like a triple threat academic person, it's hard to see the path when you're standing on it. And so for those folks, I really try to make sure that they can get in with a team to help support them so that while they may be doing 50% literally taking care of patients through part of their other time, hopefully they can be working on a research project that is in progress. So they can be part of a writing team and do the things while they're also thinking about their own research questions that they want to ask so that they can be writing a grant proposal that will turn into their own project. Because if you can keep people involved in all of the stages of research, then they're learning as they do it. So that then when their own project is at that stage, they can do it better. And I think that that is really important. And it doesn't have to be exactly in their area because there may not be anybody who's asking the exact same question as they are about lollipops and epilepsy, right? But if they're measuring something, some other environmental exposure and headache, let's say they're in neurology, then there's going to be crossover. And they're also going to be building teams and finding people to ask questions of and thinking about different ways to do things.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Yeah. I mean, it's a great example of you know that that mentoring around um, you know, skill development and um and pushing people to explore things outside their comfort areas. And and I've seen that with other graduate students too that I've worked with, you know, who um, you know, do their entire dissertation on diabetes prevention and then all of a sudden are off studying multiple sclerosis, you know, or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

So yeah, I like to ask people why not? Like why can't why not? Like, I know no one's ever done that, but is it just because they weren't creative? And that openness to try something, I mean, has gotten me in trouble sometimes for sure. But other times it's provided a path forward when something was super difficult. When I was running a um a household study during the pandemic, and we needed to get blood out of people. And there were some people who really didn't want to come into a clinic to get their blood drawn. And I was talking to a friend and he's like, you know, life insurance companies send people to your house. Why couldn't you do that? And I was like, why not? Okay, let's try it. And we did, and it totally worked. Now it turns out that life insurance blood takers don't like doing kids, so that that part didn't work, but it worked for the adults.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Well, Chrissy, we are we are almost out of time. I I've got just a couple more questions to ask you. Um, and the first one is around leadership. So just kind of segueing now from you know being a junior faculty to now, you know, somebody has been around for a while, you know, they've been doing clinic, they've been doing research, and they're ready to kind of up their game and actually lead others. So, you know, how do you encourage people, and especially women, you know, to claim leadership, but without feeling like they have to become someone else? I think this is hard, right? Am I supposed to like all of a sudden be the stern person? Or can I infuse in my sense of humor, you know, and um my caring or you know, whatever it is that they they embody. But you know, how do you how do you coach people around that?

SPEAKER_00 39:09

It's you know if you're coaching someone, you have to know them a bit because I think you're right, people want to try to put on a different personality when they take on a new role, like they're putting on a costume or putting on a mask. And so I like to ask people questions, who very coaching mentality, right? To say, in people who have been good mentors for you, what was helpful, you know, or tell me about the worst boss you ever had. How would you do something differently? Or the best boss you ever had, or what do you wish that somebody would have told you? And so then they realize that you know what they're doing is like giving a gift to their younger selves, and at the same time saying, okay, great, you know, that would work for people like you. But what about other people? So can you talk to peers and friends and by observation think about the folks that those things that worked for you didn't work for? Um, so that that's the kind of thing that I I tell people.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Yeah, good advice, really good advice. I I wish I'd had that a little earlier in my career. All right. So we are coming to the end here. It's been a great conversation. I've enjoyed every second, and I've known you for more than 20 years, and I still learn things about you and your philosophy. So this is great, great. I love this. You know, I do this podcast mostly just to learn and hang out with my friends. So this is pretty awesome. I mean, we could just go hiking. Yeah, exactly. Here we go, though. Favorite part of being an epidemiologist?

SPEAKER_00 40:52

Well, the classical epidemiologist answer is it depends. Um, but really, it's that I know lots about like enough about many different things to be dangerous, right? Travel internationally with me and I will be like, don't eat that. Or go ahead and eat that, don't swim there. Right? So um I like to help people and I like to answer questions.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Wow, maybe that's why we're friends because as a family doctor, sometimes they say I'm a mile wide and an inch deep. So, you know, we we share that. Yeah, for sure. Okay, most underrated public health tool.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

I would say it's the asking a question of compared to what?

SPEAKER_01 41:32

Ooh, the compared to what is important.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Yes, it is because you can't say, you know, people who drink 10 diet cokes sleep worse. Well, compared to what? Compared to people who drink 20 diet cokes, compared to people who mainline espresso all day, compared to people who drink water. Like it's very different interpretation. Love that. Uh, a leadership lesson you learned the hard way. That not everyone approaches challenges the same way I do. And this is something I didn't realize was a leadership lesson when I learned it. Um, it was long, long ago. Someone I knew who was like, you know, not everyone has a PhD. And I was like, oh okay, well, pretty much everyone I know does, but you're right. Huh.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Okay, and last but not least, who is a woman in science you'd love to have coffee with?

SPEAKER_00 42:31

This is uh it's actually this is a hard one um for me to answer, and I'm gonna pitch it into um an author that I would like to sit down with Laurie Garrett. She wrote the book Emerging Infectious Diseases, um, and about emerging infectious diseases called the coming plague that made me an epidemiologist. Um, and also there's an author called Mary Roach who writes all these books about like what happens to cadavers, or that um, I think that she does great science communication and has probably a lot of interesting stories to tell. Cool. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Well, Chrissy, thank you not just for joining us today, but for the way you model scientific curiosity, public health leadership, and generosity in academic life. Your career is such a powerful reminder that science does not have to fit in one box and leadership does not have to look one way. And to our listeners today, if you enjoyed this episode of She Leads Science, please follow, rate, and share it with somebody who needs to hear it. Thanks so much, Chrissy. See ya.