Catherine Pirkle, PhD
Professor
Academic Degrees
- PhD (Public Health and Epidemiology), University of Montreal
- MSc (Community Health), University of Montreal
- BSc (Environmental Sciences), McGill University
Courses Taught
- PH 441 - Introduction to One Health
- PH 435 - Back to the Future: Aging in Today's Society
- PH 611 - Fundamentals to One Health
Awards & Honors
- Fulbright Specialist (Brazil and Colombia)
- Hawaiʻi Public Health Association Public Health Hero
- Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health Faculty Inductee
Research Interests
Trained in both life-course and environmental epidemiology, I have worked across the globe investigating and addressing systems and structures that contribute to positive and negative health outcomes. I have done extensive work globally on health systems and quality of care, especially in the field of maternal and child health. My work in Hawaiʻi, and globally, has involved close collaborations with governmental agencies, health service providers, and community-based organizations. I am particularly interested in the health effects of pivotal reproductive health milestones, in both men and women, across the life course. I have investigated age at first birth, lifetime childbirths, age and type of menopause and their associations with indicators of disablement. I also work in environmental health, especially related to marine pollution, food security, and envenomation. My work in environmental health has brought me to the Canadian Arctic, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Bermuda, Republic of the Philippines, and Colombia. I have active projects in Hawaiʻi on Oceans and Human Health and the 2021 Red Hill Jet Fuel spill. I am the Scientific Director of the Thompson School Registry Hub, which provides technical assistance to the Red Hill Independent Registry.
Selected Publications
Pirkle C.M., Guerra R.O., Gómez, F., Belanger E., Sentell T.L. (2023) Socioecological factors associated with hypertension awareness and control among older adults in Brazil and Colombia: Correlational analysis from the International Mobility in Aging Study. Global Heart. 18:66.
Shaw KR, Whitney JL, Nalley EM, Schmidbauer MC, Donahue MJ, Black J, Corniuk RN, Sandquist R, Pirkle C, Dacks R, Sudnovsky M, Lynch JM. (2023) Microplastics absent from reef fish in the Republic of the Marshall Islands: Multistage screening methods reduced false positives. Marine Pollution Bulletin. 198: 115820.
Thompson M.D., Wu YY, Nett B., Ching L.K., Taylor H., Lemmen T., Sentell T.L., McGurk M.D., Pirkle C.M.(2023) Real-World evaluation of an automated algorithm to detect patients with potentially undiagnosed hypertension among patients with routine care in Hawaiʻi. Journal of the American Heart Association. 12:E031249.
Peck, K.E., Bassani D.G., Câmara, S.M.E, Domingues, M.R., Sentell, T.L., Velez, M.P., Pirkle, C.P. (2023) Adolescent childbirth and mobility disability among women ages 15-49: an analysis of population health surveys from 14 low- and middle-income countries. BMJ Open. 13:7.
Nalley, E. M., Pirkle, C.M., Schmidbauer, M. C., Lewis, C. J., Dacks, R. S., Thompson, M. D., Sudnovsky, M. D., Whitney, J. L., Donahue, M. J. (2023). Trophic and spatial patterns of contaminants in fishes from the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the equatorial Pacific. Chemosphere, 314.