Evelyn Sharkey, MSW/MPH ’14, Works to Prevent the Spread of Communicable Diseases at the Milwaukee Health Department

Evelyn Sharkey is working at the Milwaukee Health Department as a Wisconsin Population Health Service Fellow. The elite two-year fellowship focuses on issues related to communicable disease control and emergency preparedness—the areas to which Evelyn is most dedicated.

“I’m passionate about those topics—and the intersection of those topics with health disparities,” she said. “They are so important to address in today’s increasingly interconnected and globalized societies.”

Evelyn honed her interest in epidemiology through a series of increasingly advanced classes at the Brown School. She selected the Jefferson County Missouri Health Department as her practicum site, where she worked on independent research and prevention projects alongside an epidemiologist.

She also worked as a research assistant for a cancer epidemiologist at Washington University, putting biostatistics and epidemiology methods into practice. Evelyn recruited, retained, and collected data from participants in a research study about the cancer syndrome Neurofibromatosis Type 1.

In addition to her work on the research team, Evelyn also carried out an award-winning independent research project on a related topic.

“My current fellowship is building on the knowledge and skills I gained at the Brown School,” she said. “My real-world experience helped me realize that this was exactly the type of work I wanted to pursue.”