Jeremy Beckford

Jeremy Beckford is a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from San Jose State University. He then earned his MPH in Applied Epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, where he completed his thesis on substance use stigma and risk behaviors among people who inject drugs. He has served as an AmeriCorps Member through AIDS United, and later worked with the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance system in New Orleans, LA. Jeremy has experience in field work, qualitative and quantitative research methods, and multiple languages including SAS and R. His research interests include epidemiologic methods, social epidemiology, and infectious disease epidemiology.

Jeremy worked on seven projects during his one year engagement at START, acting as the Project Manager for one of them. Below are highlights from two of the projects Jeremy worked on:

• Lessons from WA on Effective Modeling-Policy Partnership: The START team documented how evidence from modeling and analytics was used to inform policy in Washington State’s COVID-19 response and identified lessons learned from this experience—which can inform research-policy partnerships, policy decisions, and formation of responsive systems to address public health emergencies in the future.
• Understanding Vaccination Data Quality Incentives: The START team conducted a review on published literature, identified a guiding conceptual framework, and interviewed experts from global programs focusing on vaccination projects. START provided an evidence database that lists the different successful interventions for improving vaccination coverage data quality, along with lists of barriers and facilitators.