The Department of Epidemiology welcomed assistant professor of epidemiology Dr. John Flunker to the team this fall.

Originally from St. Louis, Flunker completed his BS in Biology and MS in Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He then went on to complete his MPH in Environmental Health and his PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Kentucky. 

After his doctoral training, he held a dual post-doctoral scholar fellow appointment funded by the Biostatistics, Epidemiologic, and Bioinformatics Training in Environmental Health (BEBTEH) T32 training grant and the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health (PNASH) Center in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Flunker describes himself as an environmental epidemiologist and will be working on projects at Iowa designed to elucidate the relationship between environmental exposures and associated adverse health outcomes, with a focus on exposure refinement methodologies, primary data collection directly from study participants, healthcare, and workers compensation data, and working with stakeholders and community members to generate practical public health solutions.

“The environment is a ubiquitous part of our existence, and thus exerts a constant impact on our behavior and health,” he said.

At Iowa, due to existing collaborations and ongoing research, he sees great potential to address health burdens within the state that are potentially driven by environmental exposures. Such a scenario serves as an excellent opportunity to train the next generation of public health researchers and practitioners with an environmental health lens.

Flunker’s research interests more generally, in addition to environmental epidemiology, include climate change impacts on disease risk factors, on-the-ground and modeled exposure assessment methodology, respiratory disease, illness and injury surveillance, and vulnerable and at-risk populations. His currently funded projects include a CDC/NIOSH sub-award from the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center to track spatial and temporal trends in illness and injury among workers compensation claims of agriculture, fishing, and forestry workers. He also is the co-principal investigator of an ongoing cohort study funded by the Firland Foundation designed to track tree fruit worker respiratory health as a function of acute heat and wildfire smoke exposures.