Yvette Cozier, associate dean for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, and associate professor of epidemiology, has been voted president-elect of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, the nation’s oldest and largest general epidemiology organization.

Cozier will become part of the SER Executive Committee responsible for the administration of the group that includes a president, president-elect, and immediate past-president, who each serve in their respective roles for one year.

SER has been an important part of Cozier’s professional life; she attended her first SER meeting in 1999, and joined the Society in 2005. As part of her duties, Cozier says she hopes to “explore creative ways to expand the very successful SERvisits program to introduce epidemiology to both students and educators at the undergraduate and high-school levels.”

“I am excited to work with the amazing members of the organization to bring it to fruition. I am most grateful for the President-elect year so that I can better understand the inner workings of the organization,” noted Cozier.

Cozier is a Boston native and an investigator on the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS) and the BWHS Sarcoidosis Study at the Slone Epidemiology Center. Her research interests include social and genetic determinants of health in African-American women—specifically the influence of psychosocial stressors (racism, neighborhood socioeconomic status) and genetics in the development of cancer, cardiometabolic, and immune-mediated diseases (sarcoidosis, lupus). Additional research interests include oral health, and the role religion/spirituality—particularly the Black church—plays in health promotion/disease prevention in the Black community.

Cozier joins several other SPH colleagues who have been elected to lead the organization during its history, including Dean Sandro Galea and professors Martha Werler, Bernard Harlow, Lynn Rosenberg, and Kenneth Rothman.

Established in 1968, SER is the oldest and largest general epidemiology society in North America. To foster epidemiologic research, SER sponsors the American Journal of Epidemiology and Epidemiologic Reviews as well as the annual SER meeting, which includes the John C. Cassel Memorial Lecture, Kenneth Rothman Career Accomplishment Award, Tyroler Student Prize Paper, contributed papers, symposia, and posters on a wide range of epidemiologic issues.