Lea Hamner Email & Phone Number

Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States

Hired as the first regional public health epidemiologist, I am building assessment and surveillance foundations for the county. Starting with tick-borne disease to assess surveillance, program development and evaluation, policy building, and system coordination, I work with leadership, public health nurses, contact tracers, and community partners to envision and implement a stronger data-informed public health system.

Martha'S Vineyard

Hired as the first public health epidemiologist, I am building assessment and surveillance foundations for the county. Starting with tick-borne disease to assess surveillance, program development and evaluation, policy building, and system coordination, I work with leadership, public health nurses, contact tracers, and community partners to envision and implement a stronger data-informed public health system.

Remote

Managed the injury epidemiology branch of the WADOH Rapid Health Information Network (RHINO)--the syndromic surveillance system that receives data from 98/100 emergency departments within 24 hours as well as over 800 primary and urgent care clinics. Managed 3 epidemiologists to fulfill deliverables tied to $1.2 million annually in federal and state traffic safety, suicide, firearm, and overdose grants. Deliverables included dashboards and maps by syndrome visit counts and rates, free-text machine learning analysis, and trend analysis. Managed research and statutory authority approvals, data sharing agreements, data resolution, and expectations for deliverables. Drafted funding proposals to state legislature and authoring state administrative code to recover costs associated with non-emergent ad hoc requests.

Mount Vernon, Wa

Received WSHA Public Health Excellence Award in 2019. Led a team of communicable disease investigators, nurses, epidemiologists, and community health workers to reduce incidence and death from over 75 notifiable diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, led the county response including training and supervising 20 staff to respond to outbreaks as well as hospital, clinic, behavioral health, long-term care, business, school, and community needs. Ran all data quality assurance, analysis, and developed an in-house contact tracing database that served as a template for regional and state database development.

Mount Vernon

Evaluated current data sources on opioid overdoses in response to community call for relevant information. Wrote, proposed, and passed policy to make opioid overdoses notifiable to allow for follow up with individuals in crisis and refer them to care. Developed an opioid overdose surveillance system to establish reliable reporting, collection, analysis and intervention to save lives in Skagit County.

Greater Seattle Area

Designed a retrospective cohort study using data from the Tuberculosis (TB) Control Program to analyze time-to-detection (TTD) of TB in culture as a predictor for TB transmission and infectivity, linking cases to contacts. Used Poisson regression in SAS to evaluate the relationship between TTD and transmission events and the correlation between TTD and existing diagnostic tests; this research served as a master’s thesis in infectious disease epidemiology. Collaborated with a diverse, multidisciplinary team to better understand TB infection control and how improved infectivity measures benefit applied public health.

New Haven, Connecticut

New Haven, Connecticut

Santa Ana Huista, Huehuetenango, Guatemala

Epidemiology Of Microbial Diseases, Global Health & Nutrition, 2Nd Year

Bachelor Of Arts (Ba), Environmental Studies, Alumnus

Public Health, Race, And Human Rights, Junior In College

Studied abroad in the largest city in northeast Brazil, specifically examining the Unified Health System (SUS) overhaul and its efficacy.