Claire Margerison
Current Hometown
East Lansing, Michigan
Born and raised
San Marcos, Texas
Favorite musical group/singer?
Right now, my favorite singer is Brandi Carlile, and my all-time favorite group is Queen.
Favorite Color?
Yellow
Favorite sport to play or watch?
Long-distance running
What do you like to do in your free time?
I love to read novels, travel, do outdoor activities like hiking, kayaking, and skiing, and spend time with my daughters, who are 11 and 14.
What is the most interesting/enjoyable place you have visited?
I studied abroad in Ecuador as an undergraduate student, and that was probably the most interesting place that I have visited. During the time I was there, there was an overthrow of the government, an active volcano, and multiple landslides – much more exciting than my life as a college student in the US. Ecuador is very diverse ethnically, culturally, and in terms of geography and landscape. I hope to visit again someday!
What is the most helpful advice you have received?
I tried to come up with an answer to this, but I think the most useful things I’ve learned over my career, I learned from trial and error!
How did you become interested in your field? Was there a specific moment when you knew it was the right fit for you?
I first became interested in epidemiology when I worked at the American Cancer Society. My job there involved talking to patients and others about cancer screening, diagnoses, and treatment. This is where I began to learn about population-level data (e.g., survival rates). Through this job, I also realized that many patients were more concerned about social factors (e.g., lack of transportation, unable to pay for treatment, etc.) than their actual diagnosis and treatment.
I then went to the University of California, Berkeley to pursue my MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. One of my first courses was a seminar with Dr. Len Syme, who has been called the father of social epidemiology. Within the first few weeks of learning from Dr. Syme about how social factors impact health, I knew that I wanted to pursue a PhD and focus on social epidemiology.
What/who influenced you to select your area(s) of study and how has that impacted your career?
My most influential mentors were one of my PhD mentors, Ray Catalano, and our former chair, Claudia Holzman. These mentors both were interested in how the broader context in which a pregnant person lives influences the underlying biology and physiology of pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes. More importantly, these mentors taught me to value quality and rigor of research over quantity and splashy findings. Moreover, both valued building a research team where people cared about each other as well as their research.
Describe your current research or area of interest
My research seeks ways to improve women’s health across the life course—but especially during pregnancy and postpartum—and ways to reduce unfair differences in health by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and geography. Some of this work entails describing and measuring aspects of women’s health that often go overlooked and other research assesses whether we can improve women’s health through policies or programs.
What advice would you give to a student?
First, find a research area that truly excites you and ask research questions that you think are important. Graduate school and conducting research are hard (and sometimes boring) work, but if you are excited by your topic, you will feel more motivated to keep pushing through. Second, don’t be afraid of null results. Finding that there is ‘no association’ can be just as important as finding that there is an association.