Carissa Rocheleau

Epidemiologist, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

In a decade of work as an epidemiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Dr. Rocheleau’s expertise in reproductive hazards in the workplace has become widely recognized. She has conducted numerous studies on reproductive health outcomes (including menstrual dysfunction, miscarriage, and birth defects) by partnering with large, population-based studies including the National Birth Defects Prevention Study (www.nbdps.org), the Nurses Health Study 2 and 3 (www.nurseshealthstudy.org), the National Down Syndrome Project, and the Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring Study (PRAMS) (www.cdc.gov/prams). She has authored 24 original publications in peer-reviewed journals and a book chapter in Comprehensive Toxicology on epidemiological risk assessment for female reproductive toxicity. She is also the lead author on over 3 dozen topic pages on reproductive health on the CDC and NIOSH websites. As a designated “Subject Matter Expert” on reproductive hazards in the workplace, Dr. Rocheleau has provided hundreds of expert consultations, ranging from helping worried pregnant workers in unusual situations to helping occupational safety professionals to develop appropriate reproductive hazard plans, to providing expert review on draft policies to foreign regulatory agencies. As a guest lecturer, she teaches graduate students at several universities about reproductive hazards in the workplace, and mentors graduate and post-doctoral students to work in the field. She is also a member of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) scientific committees on Women, Health, and Work and Occupational Health for Health Workers. Dr. Rocheleau has a Ph.D. (2009) and M.S. (2006) from The University of Iowa in Epidemiology, and a B.A. in environmental studies and biochemistry & molecular biology from Cornell College (2002). She also completed traineeships in occupational epidemiology at the Heartland Center for Occupational Health at the University of Iowa and in reproductive molecular epidemiology with the Iowa Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention.