Ann Bradley was part of the first class to graduate in the Master of Public Health program in Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. After graduation, she headed for Washington DC for a fellowship at the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), funded through the Association of Schools of Public Health.

At the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, she helped calculate the public health impact of various chemicals in the environment, study the uses and limitations of uncertainty factors in risk assessment, and develop a framework for assessing human variability.

“The fellowship was a great opportunity to get to know the inner workings of EPA,” she said. She also had the opportunity to attend public meetings and conferences of EPA and other regulatory bodies in Washington DC.

After a year in the federal government, she wanted to try private consulting. She was hired at Mercer Island-based Integral Consulting in the summer of 2005. She works in human health risk assessment and environmental fate and transport of chemical compounds at its Maryland office. She is involved in analyzing data, conducting background research, and writing reports and other products.

We talked with her soon after she took the job, and she said, “In my new position at Integral, after only a week, I have to say the thing I am finding most exciting is the diversity of projects. It keeps the day exciting! I feel that the diversity of projects will also enable me to gain a number of new skill sets.”

At UW, she studied risk assessment and risk communication with Elaine Faustman, PhD. She chose the MPH track because she wanted a grounding in the core areas of public health, with deeper study in environmental health, particularly health risk assessment. “Having an understanding of public health, regulation, and policy, in addition to a set of technical skills in environmental health and human health risk assessment, has opened up many doors,” she said.

She said her degree gave her a broad scope of health, economics, and policy. She found that the UW has a strong program in risk assessment. She completed her thesis project, Impact and Policy Implications of Genetic Information in Regulation: A Case Study of Organophosphate Pesticides, in the Institute for Risk Assessment and Risk Communication.

The UW program taught her how to approach problems. She learned that ideal data sets aren’t often available in the real world, which limits the conclusions that can be drawn. The university environment exposed her to other disciplines such as public health genetics and policy.

She was attracted to consulting because of the diversity of projects and the possibility to learn skills at various levels. She describes “plenty of opportunity” for new graduates in the consulting field.

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