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Ashley Geczik, MPH (she/her/hers)

Ms. Ashley Geczik is working on her doctorate in Environmental & Occupational Health. She is part of the FIRST Center's commitment to create the next generation of fire service researchers. Her research is focused on organizational safety climate and its association with occupational diseases among firefighters. Ms. Geczik's research will help guide fire department leadership on ways to mitigate chronic disease risk. She has contributed to qualitative research focusing on the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and a quantitative descriptive epidemiology project for the Fire service Organizational Culture of Safety (FOCUS) survey.

Ms. Geczik received her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Loyola University Maryland in 2015. She earned her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology with a certificate in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in 2017.

Ms. Geczik previously worked at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics as a research analyst for three years. At the NCI, Ms. Geczik studied hormonal and reproductive risk factors for cancer outcomes in men and women. In her five years as an epidemiologist, she has gained competencies in all aspects of the scientific research process including proposal writing, IRB protocol management, study enrollment, data cleaning, analysis, and interpretation, manuscript writing, and peer-review publication. In 2020, Ms. Geczik presented her work titled "Tubal litigation, hysterectomy, and serum androgen and estrogen metabolism among postmenopausal women in the Women's health Initiative Observation Study" at the Society for Epidemiologic Research Annual Meeting.

Her passion towards research in the fire service, as an emerging occupational cancer epidemiologist, stems from her personal life experiences. Ms. Geczik is the daughter of a 9/11 World Trade Center disaster recovery worker subsequently diagnosed with exposure-related cancer. She chose to pursue her doctoral work at Drexel in order to conduct research working closely with fire departments across the United States.