I obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Marian College of Fond du Lac, WI, and a Master’s degree in Community Health Nursing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before seeking my Ph.D., I held a variety of community health and public health nursing positions at the City of Milwaukee Health Department and the State of Wisconsin/Division of Health. I was a volunteer health team member with the Milwaukee Archdiocese Latin American Office assigned to Chiapas, Mexico. I obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois-Chicago, School of Public Health. In 2005, I completed a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sponsored post-doctoral fellowship in Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Epidemiology at the Mississippi State Department of Health.

I am currently a CDC MCH Epidemiologist, assigned to the Iowa Department of Public Health, Bureau of Family Health in Des Moines, IA. My research interests include women’s reproductive health, access and barriers to health care, and the use of data to promote public health action.  In my role as an MCH Epidemiologist, I have worked extensively to complete data linkages, and with data sources such as Medicaid claims data, the Iowa certificate of live birth, and the Iowa Hospital Discharge data file. I obtained a certificate in E-Learning and Online Teaching in 2013 from the University of Wisconsin at Stout.  I am an assistant professor at Des Moines University (DMU)-Department of Public Health-College of Health Sciences in Des Moines where I teach online courses.