SEARCH OMHD Web site

Historical Document:
June 5, 2007
Content Source:
Office of Minority Health & Health Disparities (OMHD)

About Dr. Reynolds
 

Path to Public Health   "Firsts" Career   Encouraging Outreach Achievements & Awards   Applying Affirmative Action
Path to Public Health
Dr. Reynolds' start in public health was, according to her, “all chance.”  As a senior at Yankton College, Yankton, South Dakota (majoring in history and political science, math, and education), she planned to continue her education in math, history, political science or law when the Chair of the Math Department encouraged her to apply to graduate school in the field of statistics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where they awarded her a NIH fellowship.  Dr. Reynolds received her Masters degree in statistics and then was recruited to work at CDC.  After five years as a statistician and Unit Chief in the Statistics Section of CDC’s Epidemiology Branch, she was recruited to join the Biometry department faculty at Emory University, where she also worked towards her PhD with a major in Biometry and a minor in Biostatistics.  After two years, Dr. Reynolds received a Special NIH Research Fellowship, which paid her full faculty salary, books and travel, becoming the first woman without an MD or PhD to receive this fellowship.  The topic of her dissertation was “A Control Model for Gonorrhea.”
Top of Page
Career
Dr. Reynolds has always been especially concerned about the biases that women and minorities face in professional and management positions and has served as a role model for statisticians and women in management positions and in professional societies.
Dr. Reynolds was the first woman and the first statistician to serve as the head of a Statistics Branch at CDC.  As Chief of the Evaluation and Statistical Services Branch, Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 1979-1989, and as Senior Statistician in the Office of Minority Health, 1989-present,  her contributions included extensive collaborative work on major public health problems, especially the health of women and minorities, and in responsible administrative assignments.
Her work on mathematical modeling of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) was among the earliest in this area and the statistical work that continued under her direction on modeling, including simulation models and time series has been vital in clarifying relationships between risk factors, incidence and prevalence of disease, and control methods.  In addition to her work in modeling, she was involved in research design implementation, analysis and interpretation of program evaluation and clinical trials.
At CDC, Dr. Reynolds is the only woman to have served both as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and as a Supervisory Public Health Advisor at CDC, pioneering these roles for women.  She served as President of the Association of Executive Women at the Centers for Disease Control and was an organizing member of this association.
Top of Page
Applying Affirmative Action
As a member of the CDC Equal Employment Opportunity Advisory Council (1986-87) and Chair of the Affirmative Action Committee (1987), Dr. Reynolds developed two models: the first estimated the approximate percent of positions that must be filled by each race-sex category to meet parity (e.g., workforce or population representation) in a certain number of years, and the second model projected the number of persons needed in each race-sex category in year 1, 2, … (N-1) to ensure progress toward the goal.  The purpose of the workforce analysis was to help managers set achievable goals in affirmative employment planning and management.
In the American Statistical Association, Dr. Reynolds served on the Board of Directors, representing nine Southeastern States, for a two-year term (1965-1967), Secretary-Treasurer and Chair of the Biopharmaceutical Section, and Chair of the Statistics in Epidemiology Section of the ASA.  She served on or chaired numerous ASA committees, including nominating committees and fellows committees where she helped to ensure that women and minorities were put forth as candidates for office or fellows.  She served as Vice Chair of the EEO Committee from 1987 – 1990 and as Vice Chair and Chair of the ASA Committee on Minorities from 1996 to 2002.
As Senior Statistician for Minority Health in CDC's Office of Minority Health, she continues to serve on a number of HHS committees and work groups, e.g., the HHS Data Council Working Group on Racial and Ethnic Data, the HHS Workgroup on Measuring Disparities, and the Healthy People 2010 Black American Workgroup and the Health Disparities and Environmental Justice Workgroup of the National Children’s Study.
Top of Page
Achievements
Dr. Reynolds has been an invited participant/speaker in numerous meetings including the Conference on Statistics, Science and Public Policy in England, The Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association, and the Annual Meeting of the National Rural Minority Health Association.
Dr. Reynolds received the CDC Award for Contributions to the Advancement of Women in 1986. As a member of the CDC Equal Employment Opportunity Advisory Council (1986-87) and Chair of the Affirmative Action Committee (1987), she was especially concerned with collecting and analyzing data on women and minorities by grade level and over time. For her efforts and scientific achievements she was awarded the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989.
Dr. Reynolds was instrumental in establishing awards and programs to bring recognition and influence to the work of statisticians at CDC.  In 1987, she organized and chaired the first CDC Awards Committee for the best paper written by a statistician or statisticians.  Dr. Reynolds then organized and chaired both the first Statistical Symposium on “Statistics in Surveillance” in 1988 and the third Statistical Symposium on “Statistics in Evaluating Interventions” in 1990.   In 1991, she chaired the Annual Meeting of the American College of Epidemiology which focused on the theme “The Morbidity/Mortality Gap: Is it Race or Racism?” and was the Guest Editor of the Special Volume on the proceedings, “The Morbidity /Mortality Gap: Is it Race or Racism?” Annuals of Epidemiology, 1993. This may have been the first time the issue of racism as a cause of disparities in morbidity and mortality was openly discussed in a large professional conference. She served on the Minority Affairs Committee of the American College of Epidemiology from 1992 to 1994 and as liaison to the Statistics in Epidemiology Section, ASA from 1995 to 1998.
Dr. Reynolds was elected a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology in 1983 and in 1985, Dr. Reynolds was the first person at CDC in Altlanta to be named as a fellow by the American Statistical Association (ASA). In 1986 she was elected a member of the International Statistical Institute and is still the only scientist to be elected to the ISI from CDC in the Atlanta location.   In 1999 she received the American Statistical Association Founders Award for longstanding service to the Biopharmaceutical and Statistics in Epidemiology Sections and to many ASA Committees, and for Leadership in Advancing Women and Minorities in the Profession. Recipient of the Elizabeth L. Scott Award
Dr. Reynolds honors & awards also include the following:
		American Statistical Association Founders Award, 1999
		Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Lifetime Achievement Award, 1989
		CDC Award for Contributions to the Advancement of Women, March, 1986
		Elected to International Statistical Institute, 1986
		Fellow, American Statistical Association, 1985
		Fellow, American College of Epidemiology, 1983
		CDC Group/Professional Honor Award, July 1982
		Superior Performance Award, CDC, 1976

OMHD Home | About OMHD | Sitemap | Contact OMHD
Accessibility | Privacy Policy | CDC Sitemap | Search | Health Topics A-Z

Office of Minority Health & Health Disparities (OMHD)

Please Note: Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided solely as a service to our users. These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. The CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at these links.