Judith Graber, PhD, MS
Biography
Judith Graber, Ph.D., M.S., is an associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Rutgers School of Public Health. She transitioned to higher education after fifteen years in the public sector at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maine Bureau of Health. Dr. Graber earned her doctorate degree in epidemiology from the University of Illinois School of Public Health, where she was awarded the Haenszel Award for Excellence in Research and inducted into the Delta Omega Honor Society.
Research Interests
Dr. Graber is an occupational and environmental epidemiologist. Her research explores the intersection and synergistic impacts of occupational exposures and behavioral risk factors that are inherent to work. Her current work is focused on volunteer firefighters, who like all firefighters, are at increased risk of some cancers as well as other adverse health outcomes. She is the principal investigator (PI) of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-funded Firefighter Cancer Assessment and Prevention Study (CAPS), a research platform that partners with volunteer firefighters to understand and respond to their increased cancer risk and by implementing behavioral, biological, and environmental programs and monitoring. CAPS is a research partner of the national Firefighters Cancer Cohort Study (https://www.ffccs.org) and works within an extended framework of firefighter-specific research standards and collaboration. Both within CAPS and in collaborative research projects in community settings, Dr. Graber has also made significant contributions to understanding the community and health impacts of persistent environmental pollutants, including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly known as forever chemicals.