KEEPING UP WITH THE DATA

ALUMNI PROFILES

Thank you to our credit union partner, Elements Financial, for their support.

KEEPING Kids need so much “ UP WITH THE DATA: more than BUTLER GRAD SERVES ON CDC’S GLOBAL PANDEMIC RESPONSE academic By Kamy Mitchell ’21 “I have always known that I wanted to be in a position where I content.” could serve people,” says Kelsey Coy ’13. When starting her Butler University career as a Secondary Education major, Coy never dreamed of becoming a social epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—or of serving on an international task force during a global pandemic. In her current role as a research fellow and epidemiologist of Maternal Health with the CDC, she typically focuses on studying substance use and mental health before, during, and after pregnancy. She has also served on the emergency response for the lung injury epidemic associated with Coy discovered the field of epidemiology after reading e-cigarette or vaping product use. That is, until she was Mountains Beyond Mountains, a biography about physician deployed to the international task force for the CDC’s Paul Farmer’s work fighting tuberculosis, in her First-Year COVID-19 emergency response. Seminar class at Butler. Now, Coy studies the ways stay-at-home orders and other “When I first learned what epidemiology was, it honestly felt mitigation measures impact case counts. Using data from like I had found my home,” Coy says. So, she changed her countries all over the world, she and her colleagues are able to major to Biology and started finding opportunities to work on provide insight into the unique ways this virus has impacted epidemiology research. specific countries or general regions. Their work provides Coy says her liberal arts education from Butler has been decision-makers with the information they need to fight the valuable to her current position, as she thinks critically about pandemic. the health data she approaches each day. “The CDC works from the data, so the information released is “Butler set me up very, very well to question some of the things based on the data available,” Coy says. “As data changes, and in our world.” as knowledge expands, the CDC’s advice might change. But for now, it’s pretty simple: Wear your mask, wash your hands, and stay at home if you can.”

Note: The statements made in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.