Allison Baumgartner, MPH

Graduate Research Assistant in the Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Dental Public Health (Joint appointment with the Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Epidemiology, and the School of Dentistry).

Graduate Research Assistant II in the Epidemiology Department. I collaborate with Dr. Abram Wagner at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and his team in Aceh, Indonesia. My role is to assist in the statistical intervention evaluation plan, design a survey for an intervention arm, and support data analysis of a three-year project in Aceh, Indonesia.

Graduate Research Assistant I in the Health Behavior Health Education Department. Assists in qualitative interview thematic analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of a HIV counseling intervention among pregnant women across sub-Saharan Africa.

Leading student advocacy voice at the University of Michigan School of Public Health (SPH) and principal executive officer of the Public Health Student Assembly Managed complex and fast-paced multidisciplinary communication and feedback channels between the SPH Dean’s Team, 4+ SPH offices, 40+ SPH student organizations and student leaders, SPH student body, and across the interschool presidents’ council (a branch of the Central Student Government) Facilitated Biannual Town Hall (Fall 2024, Winter 2025) alongside PHSA Senate working groups and community partners Designed and administered a comprehensive quantitative questionnaire to holistically understand SPH student body needs through demographic and Likert scale questions - Moderated in-person town hall discussions to grasp context lacking from the questionnaire - Spearhead mixed-methods analysis and integration plan - Prepared operational and statistical reports, which are disseminated across the SPH community

Actively investigates the impact of quality antenatal care, birthing methods, and early initiation breastfeeding on maternal/infant health outcomes using quantitative statistical and epidemiologic techniques guided by clinical colleague feedback and community observation. Spearheading research and grant writing support to promote a family-centered community intervention to uplift existing maternal and child health educational programming in Araihazar, Bangladesh, increasing awareness and uplifting self-advocacy.

I worked as an active team member assisting the UNC Gillings Cardiovascular Epidemiology Department by writing a data processing workflow for a future genome-wide association study (GWAS). I attended bi-weekly meetings discussing the coding progress, wrote and edited script to represent the needs of lab team, and was the primary contact with the university’s ITS team for assistance optimizing parallel code jobs on the super computer.

Assist lab team with internal projects by running genetic correlation software (differing R packages) and conducting genome-wide analysis on specific traits. Genetic correlation data is then interpreted with written and graphs (Manhatten plots, heatmaps, forest plots). Our lab focuses on the genetic components of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease (AD), Parkinson's Disease (PD), and Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB).