Introduction - Jackson DeCook

Hello Everyone! My name is Jackson DeCook and I am a current RaHP VEC graduate fellow and MPH student concentrating in Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, from which I graduate next spring! 

I have worked in disease control and surveillance for multiple years now, beginning as a field technician and then a surveillance technician in the Vector Disease Control International Loveland office in Colorado. This experience was during my Undergraduate degree at CSU where I studied Microbiology. When I started graduate school, I joined the Foy lab at the Center for Vector-borne Infectious Diseases at CSU where I have been working on WNV endectocide research with Brian Foy's ivermectin trial and evaluating WNV transmission risk/entomological risk indices. I have also been participating in a WNV KAP surveying and messaging study with Dr. Nicole Kelp and data management on Vectorsurv. I am in the process of writing a manuscript for publication for the first time, so I am excited to see what that holds and plan on posting about the process. I also expect to post about the process of large-scale academic surveying and the summer field trial with Dr. Foy. 

I was born and raised in Casper, Wyoming and moved down to Fort Collins, CO to finish out my bachelors degree. I am engaged and have two cats. I love to watch sports (specifically football), play video games, and relax during my free time, though I should probably get more into hiking since everyone around here does that. 

Sorry about the long intro post, I'm excited to hear about all of the experiences y'all gather this summer!

Here is an obligatory cat picture, you can really tell the orange one is a silly guy.