ACE President-Elect

Faith Davis, PhD, is a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health where she is the Senior Associate Dean and Director of Graduate Studies.  She served as the Director of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics from 1997-2001 and has served on the Board of Directors for the American College of Epidemiology for two full terms. Dr. Davis has served on several national cancer committees and currently serves on the Radiation Advisory Committee of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency, is co-chair of the Brain Tumor Epidemiology Consortium, serves as an advisor to the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States and is on the board of the Illinois Division of the American Cancer Society. Dr. Davis is currently co-director of an NCI funded cancer education and prevention training grant and a CDC funded multidisciplinary public health training grant. Dr. Davis has worked in academia since 1984 where she has actively engaged students in the study of cancer epidemiology, conducted case-control studies of rare cancers to address environmental risk factors in the Chicago region and directed a cohort study funded by the Department of Energy involving a radiation exposed cohort along the Techa River in the Southern Urals of Russia.

Donna K. Arnett, PhD is Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Background:  Dr. Arnett joined the American College of Epidemiology as a Fellow in 2005.  She is a member of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, an elected member of the American Epidemiology Society, and a Fellow of the Council of Epidemiology of the American Heart Association (AHA).

Dr. Arnett earned her MSPH from the University of South Florida in 1988 and PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1991. She was awarded her first grant, a post-doctoral fellowship from AHA in 1992.  In 1994, Dr. Arnett joined the Division of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, where she was promoted to Professor with Tenure in 2002.  In 2004, Dr. Arnett became Chair of Epidemiology at UAB.  

Dr. Arnett has held many leadership positions with AHA.  She chairs the Research Committee and serves on the National AHA Board of Directors.  Dr. Arnett participated in development of the new strategic plan for the AHA.  Dr. Arnett was a chartered member of the NIH Cardiovascular Sleep Epidemiology study section, and served as Chair from 2006-2008.  Dr. Arnett is Editor for the American Journal of Epidemiology and Senior Guest Editor-in-Chief for Circulation. 

Dr. Arnett’s professional interests include cardiovascular disease epidemiology, genetic epidemiology, and pharmacogenetics.  Dr. Arnett holds five NIH grants in these areas, and is internationally recognized for her work in genetic epidemiology of complex diseases and pharmacogenetics.  She is PI of GenHAT, a pharmacogenetic study of blood pressure treatment, the Genetics of Lipid Lowering and Diet Network, and pharmacogenomics of methotrexate treatment in rheumatoid arthritis.  Dr. Arnett has published about 250 peer-reviewed articles and more than 12 book chapters or invited review papers. 

Dr. Arnett has taught graduate courses methodological aspects of epidemiology.  She chaired the Epidemiology MPH Program at the University of Minnesota and directed the NHLBI T32 Program in Cardiovascular Genetic Epidemiology.  At UAB, Dr. Arnett teaches a grant writing course and a study design course.

Christine M. Branche, Ph.D., FACE is the Acting Director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Background: Dr. Branche is an American College of Epidemiology Fellow, and a member of the Admissions Committee.  She holds a B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester, and completed her M.S.P.H. and Ph.D. in Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill while on a National Science Foundation fellowship.  Her Masters and doctoral work focused on occupational safety and health, but she also gained expertise in environmental epidemiology.  As a student she worked on maternal and child health epidemiology at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.  Working at Burroughs Wellcome Company (now Glaxo Smith Kline) as a research fellow allowed her to gain expertise in pharmacoepidemiology as well. 

Dr. Branche began her career at the CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer in the U.S. Public Health Service in what eventually becme the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.  After her EIS experience, she worked first as a staff epidemiologist, and then became a branch chief.    From 1996 to July 2007, Dr. Branche was the Director of the Division of Unintentional Injury.  She has conducted extensive research in injury prevention including drowning, water recreation, fire-related injury prevention, motor vehicle-related injury prevention and sports and recreation, falls among adults and construction workers.  In 1998 she became a Public Health Leadership Institute Scholar (CDC and University of California).  She joined NIOSH in 2007 as the Principal Associate Director coordinating science and program activities.  Currently, she the acting director of NIOSH, which is the only federal agency charged with conducting occupational safety and health research.  Dr. Branche has taught courses in epidemiology at the graduate and undergraduate levels and in medical school.

Allen Wilcox, MD, PhD, is a senior investigator in the Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH), and Editor-in-Chief of EPIDEMIOLOGY.

Background:  Dr. Wilcox completed his medical degree at the University of Michigan in 1973 and his PhD in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina in 1979. Since 1979, he has been an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Environmental Sciences (NIEHS, NIH) in North Carolina, where he served as Chief of the Epidemiology Branch from 1991 to 2001. His research interests focus largely on reproduction and pregnancy (fertility, pregnancy loss, fetal growth, birth defects). He is author of a textbook titled “Pregnancy and Reproduction: An Epidemiologic Perspective” to be published by Oxford University Press later this year.

He is a past president of the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research (SPER), the Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER) and the American Epidemiologic Society (AES). He holds an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Bergen (Norway).  He has been a Fellow in the American College of Epidemiology since 1991, and recently participated in an ACE workshop on the theme of translating epidemiologic results into policy action.

Christine M. Arcari is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Preventive Medicine and Community Health and Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston.

Background:  Dr. Arcari received her MPH from the University of South Florida, College of Public Health and her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Prior to joining UTMB, she worked at the University of Wisconsin and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Her research area of interest is the intersection of chronic and infectious diseases.  Most recently, she is focusing on health disparities in chronic liver disease and liver cancer and the role of viral hepatitis.  She is actively involved in teaching epidemiology and mentoring graduate and MPH students.  Dr. Arcari has been a member of ACE since 2003 and has served on the ACE Associate Member Taskforce.