Dornsife students and alumni were selected for the Fire Service Injury Research, Epidemiology and Evaluation Fellowship this summer. Hosted by the Center for Firefighter Injury Research and Safety Trends (FIRST), this summer’s fellowship had an emphasis on safety culture. Fellows also had opportunities to work with other non-fatal injury datasets from the Philadelphia Fire Department and Boston Fire Department, extending work completed by the 2016 Fire Fellows.  

This 10-week fellowship was conducted in partnership with the Fire Department Safety Officers Association (FDSOA), and was supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Assistance to Firefighter Grants (AFG) program. 

2017 FIRE Fellows included Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health graduate students and alumni from a range of departments. Led by FIRST Center director Jennifer Taylor, PhD, MPH, CPPS, associate professor of environmental and occupational health, FIRE Fellows collaborated throughout the summer on analysis of fire service data.

The 2017 FIRE Fellow recipients were:

• Genevieve Adair, MPH environmental and occupational health ’17 
• Carol Collins, MPH epidemiology ’18 
• Briana Gibson, MPH epidemiology ’18
• Cecelia Harrison, MPH epidemiology ’18
• Shachi Mistry, MPH epidemiology ’18
• Regan Murray, MPH community health and prevention ’17

Fellows were trained in quantitative and qualitative methods, data management, working and building relationships with stakeholders, injury classification systems, exploratory data analyses, and advanced statistical analyses. In addition to Taylor, FIRE Fellows were mentored by FIRST project managers Andrea Davis, MPH ’12, CPH and Lauren Shepler, MPH ’15.  

Fellows assisted with dissemination, stakeholder engagement and data management for the Fire Service Organizational Culture of Safety (FOCUS) Survey created by FIRST. 

The FIRST Center supports the United States fire and rescue service through objective data collection and analysis. Two distinct FIRST Center research projects are funded to address injuries in the fire service by: 1) developing a fire service safety climate survey and testing its association with injuries and 2) investigating the minimum data elements necessary to develop a non-fatal injury surveillance system.

For more information, please contact Victoria Gallogly, Outreach & Communications Coordinator: vhg25@drexel.edu