Lauren welcomes Dr. Amy Ogilvie (20MS, 23PhD) to the podcast for a discussion about her personal and professional interest in Huntington’s Disease as well as her journey to earn a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Iowa.

Lauren Lavin:

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to From the Front Row. This week, we have a fun interview with a recent Iowa PhD graduate, Dr. Amy Ogilvie. Amy earned her doctoral degree in epidemiology and graduated recently in December of 2023. In this episode, you’ll hear us chat about Amy’s research interests, specifically Huntington’s Disease, both her personal and professional experience investigating that. You’ll also hear us give some tangible takeaway advice for graduate students and PhD students. We hope you enjoy the episode.

Thank you for coming to the podcast, Amy. I’d love it if you could start off by telling us a little bit about yourself and your academic background.

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah, thanks for having me. So I just graduated this past December from the University of Iowa in the Department of Epidemiology. I did my master’s at Iowa as well in the same department, so I was there for about five years. Before that, I was at the University of Cincinnati and I have a background in math and statistics, so I love the coding side of epi, and things like that. So I’ve always come from an analytical background and now doing something completely new, and I am now with the University of Colorado doing a postdoc, doing a qualitative project. I’m really excited to expand on what I learned from my degree at Iowa and try something new.

Lauren Lavin:

Where are you from originally?

Amy Ogilvie:

I’m originally from Iowa City.

Lauren Lavin:

Okay.

Amy Ogilvie:

I graduated from City High School, so Iowa City native, and then I went to Cincinnati for my undergrad and came back.

Lauren Lavin:

Why did you decide to go to Cincinnati for your undergrad?

Amy Ogilvie:

So initially, I wanted to be an engineer, so I started out as a biomedical engineering major at Cincinnati, and Cincinnati has a wonderful co-op program. So it’s actually a five-year engineering program and they require you to do co-ops for every other semester starting in your second year, so it was a big draw to, essentially, be doing a paid internship every other semester [inaudible 00:02:09] two years, and so that’s what initially drew me to Cincinnati. I ended up changing my major a couple times, but ended up in math my junior year. But yeah, the engineering part was what initially drew me to Cincinnati.

Lauren Lavin:

I think we can all relate to switching our major. I definitely didn’t end up in math, but we all know the process of trying to decide what it is that we’re going to do. How did you go from engineering to then a master’s and a PhD in epi?

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah. So at Cincinnati, I had a wonderful person in the math department that I initially talked to when I was transitioning majors, Dr. Mitro. And her daughter studied epidemiology, I believe, at Harvard, and so I had come from a background of wanting to be in the biomedical space, I started in biomedical engineering. Both my parents were in healthcare, and so there was always a piece of me that liked the health component. And then she was able to tie me to epidemiology as a career path. And I did explore both epi and biostats, and I just liked epi a little bit more in that it was a little bit more of really focusing in on the population that I was really interested in, and gave me a little bit more flexibility to do that.

Lauren Lavin:

For our listeners who maybe aren’t as familiar with the field of epidemiology, could you give a little overview? Or how would you define epidemiology?

Amy Ogilvie:

I think that epidemiology… I think it can look like a lot of different things, but a lot of what I think epidemiologists do is they try to understand patterns of disease and what factors might influence disease in different populations. I think when a lot of people hear “Epidemiology,” and I got this all the time when I was studying, is infectious disease epidemiology. Especially with the pandemic and COVID, I had people ask me all the time, “So you know so much about COVID,” and it’s like, “Yeah, kind of. I hear about it a lot in seminars, but I myself am not an infectious disease epidemiologist, so I don’t know all that stuff.” So I ended up specializing a little bit more in health services epidemiology and a neurodegenerative population. A lot of the work that I did was in Huntington’s Disease and a little bit in Alzheimer’s and dementia as well. So yeah, epidemiology is so broad, but at the core of it, it’s just trying to understand diseases and disease process, which I think the ultimate goal of trying to improve health and healthcare in the end.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, I think that was a really great way to describe it. Did you always know that you wanted to get a PhD, or did you start with the master’s and then decide to move on to the PhD after you had started?

Amy Ogilvie:

So I started in the MPH program. I started initially thinking… I think I wrote my letter for my application thinking I was going to do maternal and child health, and so I think, initially, I was thinking a little bit more of an applied focus and maybe only doing the master’s, but then once I actually started doing research… I didn’t do any research in undergrad except for my last semester, which was a super basic capstone project, and so once I got my feet wet and really understood what research was and what it could be, I started to lean a little bit more towards a PhD and that was the best path to be able to do the work that I really wanted to do.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

I think it takes time to figure out what it is that you want to do. The more school I go to, the more I realize I don’t know, and that prompts me to think about what it is I want to do in the future, too.

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah. Because even when I started my PhD, I had one idea of what my dissertation was going to look like, and then about a year and a half in, I was like, “I don’t think that’s the right fit for me, I’m going to pivot.”

Lauren Lavin:

Yep.

Amy Ogilvie:

Even within that three and a half years that I was working on the doctorate, my idea changed completely. Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Absolutely. My idea has changed ten times. It’s just like how undergrads changed their majors, PhD students changed their dissertation topics just as many times. So moving on to talk a little bit about your research focus. Could you describe your research area and its significance, either in your personal life or why you chose that as your area?

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah. So I’ve been doing research with data on patients with Huntington’s Disease and their care partners for pretty much my whole time, master’s through PhD, and there’s some great secondary data resources that allow me to look at that population. And so Huntington’s Disease, or HD as I probably refer to it by this point, it’s a neurodegenerative condition. It’s rare, I think the prevalence in North America is like seven per 100,000, and it usually occurs in midlife and it’s… Some people describe it as components of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and ALS all wrapped into one. So there’s cognitive impairment, it’s a movement disorder, and so there’s a lot of involuntary movements, and just a slow progression of losing the ability to function over about 15 to 20 years. There are no cures or treatments, and so a lot of my work in my doctorate and continuing now into my postdoc is trying to understand how we can improve the accessibility and quality of care for these patients, because there aren’t any available treatments to really modify their symptoms.

Lauren Lavin:

Do they do any palliative treatment?

Amy Ogilvie:

So palliative care is what I’m really interested in. So my postdoc is in palliative care and aging at Colorado, and I think it’s a really great tool for patients that are in this position. Really, the only treatments are either currently existing like… Antidepressants and antipsychotics are really common, there’s a couple of drugs that have been approved to help with the motor symptoms that minimize those, but other than that, it’s really up to the physicians and clinicians to, using their best judgment, decide what would be best for treatment. And so yeah, I’m focused in my career on trying to bring neuropalliative care into the Huntington’s space and understanding…

Especially from almost a non-pharmacologic, for sure, but there’s a lot of decision-making that goes into just the disease process when you think about nursing home care placement, when you think about modifications to the home, early retirement, because these are patients that are in their forties and fifties, they tend to have sometimes young families, and so there’s just a lot of different components that do make Huntington’s distinct from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that haven’t been explored yet, and how we can understand what decisions are important to these patients and their families and how we can best support that. So that’s where I see myself hopefully going.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Do people with Huntington’s disease typically end up in a long-term care facility?

Amy Ogilvie:

A lot of the times, I think they do. Their symptoms become really challenging to manage, especially… There’s also… Some people might go to facilities earlier due to behavioral components of the disease, aggression and irritability are pretty common, and so there’s that potential early placement. There’s also just caregivers… When you think about caregivers, especially spouses and partners who might not be able to stop employment, because they are also earlier than retirement age, sometimes the care facility is just necessary to maintain some type of income, and so I think it’s understudied and we’re working on understanding specifically a nursing home, long-term care facility angle, and what about that process is challenging?

Because then the other side of it is that a lot of places just aren’t equipped to care for the specific needs of this population with all of the movements and there’s challenges in… How do you even get someone to maybe stay in a chair? Because they’re moving so much, and things like that. And facilities maybe won’t take patients that they just can’t provide adequate care for, and so some families are faced with decisions of moving their loved one miles or states away, so that they can have quality care, and how you make that decision of high-quality care versus being able to see the person that’s part of your family on more of an everyday basis. So it’s really challenging.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. And I’m sure that hasn’t gotten easier with all of the staffing shortages. When their nursing homes are having problems just staffing for someone who’s maybe aging regularly, let alone someone with special considerations like with Huntington’s Disease.

Amy Ogilvie:

Other thing that is related to the Huntington’s Disease… My experiences are driven by personal… So my dad had Huntington’s, which is another thing that just drives, one, my passion for helping these patients and their families, because my family has been there personally. I’ve witnessed the challenges in nursing home placement was one, or just, how do you get a wheelchair? Or how do you enroll in hospice? And so that has really influenced my passion, and then also just seeing the work that goes into caring for someone has really impacted how I view what’s important to look at and really understanding how storytelling, too, can play a role in research, which is something that I’m hoping to incorporate more.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s really important background information. I think a lot of us connect, especially if you’re outside the research field, with the story is a lot easier to remember and makes a bigger impact. So the fact that you can connect both the research, the quantitative side, with the qualitative storytelling is probably a really important part of your journey.

Amy Ogilvie:

Sometimes there’s a little bit of a… People will sometimes see, when you have such a strong connection to something, as potentially a bias, and I am someone that doesn’t totally think that’s true, or I think it’s important to be able to recognize how your personal experiences… And this could be for anyone studying anything, because I truly believe that most people that are doing research are researching what they are for a specific reason, and we have some sort of connection. And so I think that it’s really useful to understand how that can be a strength. And I know, for me, one of the strengths is being able to connect with people at other organizations like nonprofits, and things like that, where when you do share stories like that, you’re building trust and, with trust, comes the ability to create a more engaged research space with people who really think that you’re in it for the right reasons and that they see themselves in you and, therefore, want to support your work and understand the meaning behind it.

And so if anything, what I’ve learned so far is that that’s one of the biggest benefits of being willing to share a piece of you and your research, is that the connections you make and the people you meet and how they impact you and how they impact your research I think is incredibly valuable.

Lauren Lavin:

I think that having that personal connection is really important, and while some people may see it as a bias, having firsthand experience also allows you to maybe ask deeper questions than you might if you just knew these experiences from the surface level. What challenges have you faced during your PhD journey and how have you overcome them?

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah, so COVID was probably the biggest challenge. I started the doctorate in 2020, the fall of 2020, and so it was interesting to go from the first couple years. No one was at the college, you had to schedule time to be in your office when no one else was there to avoid contact, and so it was really hard to build relationships. And I had gotten [inaudible 00:14:38] master’s of seeing the doctoral students have great relationships, and to just have that roadblock of just not being able to spend physical time with people was probably the biggest challenge. And I started to see that change in the last year of my doctorate as people were in the building more, they were going to classes, and the first year class that was there as I was graduating, I got to know some of them and they just felt really upbeat and excited and they were all there all the time.

And so it was nice to see that going back a little bit more to what I thought it was going to be, but there’s also a piece of me that will just always probably be a little sad that my experience was cut short in that way due to [inaudible 00:15:24]. And so it’s nice to be able to have the flexibility to do a lot of… A lot of epi work can be done from home and using secondary data, and things like that, and so it was nice that I could still do what I wanted to do, but having to schedule everything over Zoom and not be able to connect with people I think was one of the biggest challenges.

Lauren Lavin:

We’ve definitely had to learn to adapt to a little bit more of an online relational community with the COVID pandemic. Flipping to a little bit more positive angle, what do you think has been the most rewarding aspect of learning to be a researcher and your future career as a researcher?

Amy Ogilvie:

I think, especially looking back now on my doctorate, which I’m not that far removed, so I don’t… I’m sure I’ll have different opinions again in five years, but just the ability to build connections and to build connections across disciplines, I think, was one of the most rewarding parts of my doctorate. I think I worked really hard to create a team of individuals from the hospital, from the College of Public Health, the College of Nursing, and outside the institution to really broaden the ideas that were being brought to the table for my research, and I think it made my research stronger by having all those different perspectives. And it took a little upfront, I don’t know, boldness, if you want to call it, of sending my emails. I’m now such a fan, because 95% of the people that you send an email to, I feel like, will at least be generous and email you back.

Lauren Lavin:

I totally agree. Cold emails are really underrated, actually. If you can do them right, I think the response is pretty good.

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah, I had that experience, too. I mean, it’s the reason why I added someone from UCLA to my dissertation committee, it’s the reason why I have opportunities to learn about new conferences or make connections with people who are doing the work that I’m interested in that might not be at Iowa. And also, the other thing is taking coursework outside of my department and outside of the college, I also found incredibly valuable. I took an undergrad anthropology course, I can’t remember if that was… I think it was maybe during the first year of my doctorate, and so I am not entirely sure that I got credit for it, but the experience and because the class was so…

It was the anthropology of caregiving, and because the class was so intertwined with what I was interested in and I was able to make a really nice connection with the professor of that course who then connected me with this palliative care community at Iowa… Sometimes coursework is another avenue for making connections if you’re willing to take the first step and be like, “I’m interested, do you know of anyone?” And so even if someone doesn’t know of anyone, they might know of someone that knows of someone and is like, “You can ask this person.”

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah, I think that’s been one of the most rewarding parts.

Lauren Lavin:

In that same vein, have you collaborated with other researchers or institutions throughout your PhD program, and how did you form some of those connections?

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah, I think… So outside of Iowa, I collaborated a little bit with a researcher at UCLA, and I connected with her, because she had a postdoctoral fellowship that, at the time, I was looking at. And so I’d initially emailed her just to talk with her about her experience with that fellowship, what it was like to apply those sorts of questions, but in our conversation, it blossomed into… She had a background in medicine, I had a background in statistics, and statistical skills are something that people really want to have.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Amy Ogilvie:

It created a nice relationship where she knew that I had time and abilities, and so I was able to help her out on some projects. And so one initial conversation about a fellowship ended up turning into collaboration on projects, and she was the one that ended up being on my committee for my dissertation, too. And so, really, it was the cold email that got my foot in the door for that collaboration. And similar with outside of the College of Public Health, too. I had done some collaboration with the palliative care team at Iowa and some of their fellows research projects, and that was just through a series of connections with people, being like, “I’m interested in palliative care. Do you know who I can talk to about…”

They let me come shadow their team for two weeks at the hospital, which was really eyeopening, because I think sometimes in epi and probably in other disciplines too, you use a lot of secondary data, and so I think it’s easy to not always remember that each of those data points that you’re looking at are people and stories and experiences. And so being able to go and shadow a clinical team to see what their process is and some of the components that go into these data sets that we look at was really helpful. And so even that collaboration in a way, of being able to shadow and understand how the clinical side works as someone who’s not a clinician I think is incredibly valuable.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Goes back to that firsthand experience again. So how important do you think networking or having a mentorship team is for a PhD student?

Amy Ogilvie:

I think it’s really important, and I think sometimes I think it’s not talked about enough, especially the mentorship component. I’m not sure we ever actually name it, and I think it would be really helpful to… Especially as I’ve moved on to a postdoc, where “Mentorship” is a word that is used all the time, and so understanding what that looks like, because I think a lot of people probably have mentors and maybe they don’t know what to call it or haven’t really talked about it with someone, but those are the people who are really there to support you and offer their time to you and help you, because they feel like you can be successful and they can be helpful in that.

And I was really fortunate to have two really great primary mentors at Iowa, Brian Carnahan was my mentor in epi, who was someone who was very experienced with working with students, and I could always tell that and was very responsive to my emails. And then I had a mentor in psychiatry who was a brand new mentor, and so I got to see both sides of… With my new mentor in psychiatry, we explored everything together. I got to see what it would look like to start being a mentor, too, which is also a… It’s challenging. I was just in a seminar yesterday talking about, “Is mentorship a trait or a skill that can be developed?”

Lauren Lavin:

And what was the conclusion?

Amy Ogilvie:

I think the conclusion was it is a skill that can be developed, and I think when you break down what mentorship is and the components of it, I think they are all things that if you put your time and effort into it. Like responsiveness and communication, those are all things that can get improved on. And I think that when you recognize those things, you can start to see how you can make them better and how you can form relationships.

Lauren Lavin:

And I think teaching is in that same vein. I think there can be a natural propensity for things like mentorship or teaching, but I also think that there’s a lot of skill involved and sometimes we overlook that development of the skill, because I think it really is something that can be cultivated within someone.

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah. Just like teaching, I think it is something that has a learning curve to it.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Did you have any-

Amy Ogilvie:

[inaudible 00:23:26] challenging.

Lauren Lavin:

Did you have any opportunity to teach as a PhD student, or any desire to?

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah. I TAed a couple classes, I think I actually TAed during my master’s. And then I taught a half semester course towards the end of my doctorate, and I learned a very valuable lesson from all those things about things like communication and understanding, in the case of teaching, what students’ needs are and being able to adapt to that. Yeah, the ability to think on your feet as a teacher is something that I don’t think people understand how much goes into that and being able to see how the students are doing and being like, “Well, that’s not working, let’s try something else.” So yeah, it was a great experience for me to… It was only a half semester of primary teaching and it was a great experience for me to learn what teaching was, and I had a great group of students who were willing to let me make mistakes and fix them alongside me, which was very nice of them.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Teaching, in the beginning, is a very humbling experience, because it’s a lot of on your feet thinking, like you said, especially when you’re in the beginning. You just have to roll with it and see what works and what doesn’t, and hopefully, you have gracious students on the other side. What advice would you give to somebody considering to pursue a PhD in the field of epi?

Amy Ogilvie:

I think this would apply to epi and just all other fields in general. Don’t come in thinking that you need to know what exactly it is that you want to do. I think we got at this a little bit, but I changed my idea multiple times, it sounds like you’ve changed your idea multiple times, and I think a lot of people when they go into a doctorate, there’s this expectation that you at least have something to go on right away. And I don’t always think that’s the case and I think there’s a lot of learning that can be done if you come in open-minded and seeing what’s available to you and starting to explore your passions a little bit more. I think that’s kind of… And be open to cold emails. If you don’t know what you want to do, don’t be afraid to send emails to professors in your department, professors in other departments.

Most of the time, they’re very willing to help you, and if they can’t help you, a lot of the times, they’ll at least point you in the direction of someone that can. I think the doctoral experience is a lot more about learning, and it’s okay that you don’t always have a firm direction. There’ll be ups and downs, and that’s just part of the process.

Lauren Lavin:

It really is a period of exploration, I think. Even by the time you get to the end of it, I think you just started your journey of exploring, which that’s, I think, the journey of a researcher. That’s what appeals to them throughout their whole life. Are there any things that you wish you would’ve known about a PhD prior to starting the process?

Amy Ogilvie:

Great question. I think I was fortunate that I did my master’s at the same place that I did my doctorate, and so I was able to see what it was like, and I took classes with first year doctoral students, so… I wish maybe more talking about the jump from undergrad to grad school, and maybe this is more for people who maybe go from a master’s at one institution to another institution, is take a good look at the coursework and what’s required, and don’t be afraid to email people at those programs and ask questions. It’s hard to tell from a website what a program is all about, and so emailing, whether it’s a grad coordinator, whether it’s someone whose research looks interesting just to get a sense for, what does a PhD in epi look like at Iowa? Who are these people that are running things?

And it is… I think you say this in just general job interviews, too. You’re interested in them as much as they are in you, and it’s okay for you to be like, “I don’t think that’s a good fit for me,” even if they think it’s a good fit for them. And so understanding that it’s a two-way street. And for the doctoral program, too. If you’re coming in and have an idea of maybe who you want to be on a mentorship team and then you meet with them and you’re like, “Well, maybe that isn’t as great of a fit as I thought it was going to be.” It’s okay that it didn’t work out how you thought it should have looked on paper and I think that being able to do the work before accepting or applying I think is a big benefit.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, I would definitely second that. And that notion that it’s a two-way street and you’re choosing to spend a significant chunk of your twenties, typically, or young adult life in an institution and with these people, and so I think it’s important that you do that due diligence before and make sure it’s a place that you see yourself growing and you like the people and the department that you’re going to be working for and with. So I think that’s a really good piece of advice.

Amy Ogilvie:

In undergrad, you go on all the college visits and you tour campus and you see what it’s like, and it’s like… Sometimes you don’t always do that for grad school, but it’s like you’re going to be spending the same amount of time there.

Lauren Lavin:

If not longer.

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah, and so it’s like… Maybe we should be emphasizing campus visits and seeing the culture. And maybe that was more of a thing before COVID, but I think now so much is done over Zoom that you don’t always get a feeling for what it truly is like on campus.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, I did not step foot on Iowa before I was accepted, which granted, I’m only from South Dakota, so it’s not like I had never been to Iowa, but I had not been to the University of Iowa before I accepted my PhD spot here. So I don’t think it’s as common, and I don’t know why that is. So what are your plans post PhD? I know you’re in a postdoc now, how long does that… How long will you be in that position, and then what would you like to do after that?

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah. So my postdoc is… It’s a two-year T32 program, and so… I just started it in January, so I’m still exploring what I hope to do after. I think I’ll end up in academics, whether that’s with a school of medicine, working with palliative care or a neurology department versus whether that’s in a college of public health, in an epi department, or in a… I think my work sometimes really aligns with a health management and policy department, health services research area, too. I’m taking this first year to year and a half to really explore where I feel like my fit is, and then also thinking about what I want my day-to-day to be.

I think a lot of the times, when you go work for schools of medicine, you don’t do as much teaching. Trying to decide how much I want to teach and want to be maybe more in that College of Public Health space where there is a little bit more teaching and student engagement involved. I’m still up in the air on that, but I really did teaching when I was at Iowa and I liked being involved with the students. And so I, at the moment, probably lean a little bit that way, but who knows over the next 18 months, or so, what’ll happen.

Lauren Lavin:

Sounds like you have lots of options, though, to explore. In what ways do you envision your research making a positive impact on society? I think that’s our ultimate goal as researchers, is that we hope that it doesn’t just exist in a vacuum and that it can go on to benefit individuals. So how do you see your research doing that?

Amy Ogilvie:

Yeah. I think, at least at the moment, my end goal is to be a decision aid and interventionist a little bit and understanding how I can take understanding people’s experiences and decision-making processes and translate those to something that can be used in clinic that… With the overall goal of improving quality of life, because the patient group that I work with, they don’t have any cures or treatments right now. Quality of life is the biggest thing that, I think, we can work towards improving. And so I’m hopeful that, with the development of tools that can help ease decision burden and help people understand the different pathways that they can take, that hopefully that’ll make life just a little bit easier, and as we’re waiting for that cure to be developed.

And so that’s hopefully where I think some impact will be seen and then, who knows? Maybe those tools and interventions will be adopted and can impact a larger portion of the population that needs that support. So I’m excited to see where it takes me, I think there’s a lot of potential for impact there, and it’s just the time it takes to actually develop, that’s the hard part. I’m someone that-

Lauren Lavin:

So long, yeah.

Amy Ogilvie:

… helps to think about it upfront and is like, “Well, let’s go do this now,” and they’re like, “Well, no. You got to do this first and test this,” and so there’s always the moving pieces, but it’s fun to think about what something that could be applied in clinic could actually be in terms of impacting people’s lives.

Lauren Lavin:

I think that’s really beautiful and really hopeful. We’re going to close this out, we have one question that we ask all of our guests, and that is, what is one thing you thought you knew but were later wrong about?

Amy Ogilvie:

When I went to my undergrad at Cincinnati, I did not even apply to Iowa, because I was [inaudible 00:33:15] out of here. I thought I knew that I wanted to be away, and I came to a realization that I was wrong. And I think that maybe what I learned from that is that, when you’re 18, you don’t always have a good sense of what your values are or what your priorities will be when you’re 27, 28. And so looking back and now realizing that I do want to be close to my family, I was wrong that I want to go across the country, even though Cincinnati wasn’t that far away. And so I think undergrad is a great time for people to go and explore and try something new, but keeping your mind open to what is important to you, because you’ll start to understand that as you gain years in experience and independence. But yeah, I think that that’s something that I initially was like, “Really, I don’t want to be here, any of these people.” And then I was like, “Wait. No, come back.”

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. I think that sentiment is shared by a lot of people. I think about all of the changes that even I had within undergrad, and a lot around those same lines of, “Where do you really want to end up?” And I think family plays a big role in that, so I love that. What a great way to end. Well, thank you so much, Amy, for being on the podcast today. We loved this conversation with you and we hope our listeners did, too.

Amy Ogilvie:

Awesome. Thanks for having me, it was fun.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s it for our episode this week, big thank you to Dr. Ogilvie for joining us today. This episode was hosted and written by Lauren Lavin and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast, please share it with your colleagues, friends, or anyone interested in public health. Have a suggestion for our team? You can reach us at cph-gradambassador@uiowa.edu. This episode is brought to you by the University of Iowa College of Public Health. Until next week, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.