Video transcript · 4 min · 454 words

Tara Hartley, NIOSH epidemiologist, on her career path: transcript

Tara Hartley, an epidemiologist at NIOSH, describes her education in West Virginia and her work studying heart disease risk factors in police officers. She talks about the reward of seeing research help workers, the lack of early mentoring, and her advice to young people interested in science.

Key points

She earned a biology degree at West Virginia Wesleyan College, then a Master of Public Administration, a Master of Public Health and a PhD in Public Health Sciences at West Virginia University.
Epidemiologists study illness and injury in groups of people; at NIOSH the groups are occupational.
For eight years she has worked on a study of police officers, looking at whether stress, inactivity or night shifts raise their risk of heart disease.
A police officer helping recruit participants thanked the research team, which showed her the value of the work for worker health.
Her early challenge was not having a mentor who showed how broad science careers can be.
She advises going for it, staying determined, asking questions and finding a mentor in an area that excites you.

Chapters

0:00Education and what epidemiologists do
1:09Studying heart disease risk in police officers
1:43Seeing research benefit workers
2:28Finding a mentor and career challenges
3:02Growing up in a small town and advice to others

Full transcript

0:00Hello, welcome. I went to West Virginia Wesleyan College, where I earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology.

0:39Then I came to West Virginia University, where I obtained a Master of Public Administration, a Master of Public Health, and last year received the Doctorate of Philosophy in Public Health Sciences. My name is Camden-Ongali, a very small town in Central West Virginia, population 149. I'm an epidemiologist, and epidemiologists study illness and injury in groups of individuals.

1:09So here at NIOSH, we study occupational groups. So for the last eight years, I've been involved with the study of police officers, and we're looking at what risk factors lead them to have more cardiovascular disease or heart disease. So we're trying to determine if it's stress-related, if it's lack of physical activity, if it's because they work the night shift. So by being able to determine what those risk factors are, we'll be able to intervene and hopefully reduce or eliminate those risk factors and ultimately improve their cardiovascular health.

1:43There was a recent conversation I had with a police officer, and this police officer is in charge of recruiting police officers to our study. And he repeatedly thanked me, and not just me, but our whole research team, for conducting the study. And they recognized the value of the research study in terms of helping them and helping future officers in terms of their health. It's the potential impact on worker health. Being able to identify what those work characteristics are that influence or impact injury and illness is very important.

2:28Early on, it was definitely not having the right mentor. That was a challenge to me. Someone to show me just how expansive the career opportunities are for a scientist. The options that were given to me was, if you're going to get a degree in biology, you're either going to be a medical doctor or you're going to be a teacher. And those just really weren't right for me. So once I found that strong mentor, I was able to really find my own edge. So, I'm from a very small town in West Virginia with very few job opportunities.

3:02No one in my family had, in fact, ever been to college. Fortunately for myself, my parents were able to send me to college, but what was most important was that I had their encouragement, and also the encouragement of my teachers and my community just to dream big. So, my advice is very simple, to go for it. Stay determined. Don't be afraid to ask questions. find that area that excites you and the mentor in that area and learn from them and ask lots of questions This is a transcript.

Source and licence

Recording: File:Science Speaks - Talking to Women in Science (Tara, Epidemiologist).webm by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (2013-11-04), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The transcript is machine speech-to-text by the TidyTools Audio & video transcriber; the summary, key points and chapters were written by Claude from that transcript. Both may contain errors: check the recording before quoting it.