KL
Kai Yee Law
  • Public Health
  • Suwanee, GA

Georgia State Public Health Student Royal Kai Yee Law Successfully Defends His Ph.D. Dissertation

2016 Sep 13

Royal Kai Yee Law of Suwanee defended his dissertation this summer on using pre-diagnostic data to monitor public health threats.

"Surveillance is a key component of public health practice," Dr. Law stated in his dissertation defense. "Early detection of a new outbreak or new information about a public health issue could prevent morbidity and mortality and reduce healthcare expenditures for the economy."

Dr. Law presented three studies in his dissertation that explored new ways for poison center records to be used for early identification of public health threats and for evaluating policy and program impact by identifying changing trends in poison center records. The goals of the studies were to assess whether poison center records can be used for surveillance of noninfectious foodborne disease outbreaks; to assess whether state public health interventions such as prescription drug monitoring programs were associated with a reduction in opioid use; and to assess whether state legislation such as recreational marijuana legalization was associated with an increase in marijuana use.

Dr. Law is currently employed as an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health.