Executive Committee & Coordinating Center

An Executive Committee that represents the Federal agency partners provides overall governance for the AHS, at present including representative from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institute of Environment Health Sciences (NIEHS), and United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The committee provides oversight to ensure the safety and privacy of study participants and maintain the integrity of the AHS protocol. The committee reviews and approves requests for data, add-on studies, and manuscripts prior to submission for publication, and serves as a liaison to outside investigators working with AHS data.

Executive Committee

Laura Beane Freeman, PhD - NCI
Dr. Beane Freeman is a Senior Investigator in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. Dr. Beane Freeman joined the NCI in 2003 as a post-doctoral fellow upon completion of her Ph.D. in epidemiology at the University of Iowa in 2003. Her research addresses associations between agricultural exposures, including pesticides, bioaerosols and other factors related to livestock and poultry production and cancer etiology.

Jonathan Hofmann, PhD, MPH - NCI
Dr. Hofmann is a tenure-track investigator in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB), Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. Dr. Hofmann joined the NCI in 2009 as a post-doctoral fellow upon completion of his Ph.D. in Epidemiology at the University of Washington. His research focuses on evaluating the role of agricultural exposures in the development of lymphoid malignancies, kidney cancer, and other cancers, and on understanding the biological mechanisms of action through which agricultural exposures may influence cancer risk.

Christine G. Parks, PhD, MSPH - NIEHS
Dr. Parks is the staff scientist for the AHS at NIEHS and a member of the Chronic Disease Epidemiology Group where she studies how environmental factors affect the risk of autoimmune diseases and infections. Her work also includes biomarker studies to investigate factors that may contribute to the development of autoantibodies as one mechanism on the path towards clinical disease. Dr. Parks earned her PhD in 2001 in Epidemiology from the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She joined the AHS in 2016 after completing fellowships with the Epidemiology Branch at NIEHS and working at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Dale P. Sandler, PhD - NIEHS
Dr. Sandler is Chief of the Epidemiology Branch at NIEHS. In addition to her work on the Agricultural Health Study, she is Principal investigator of the Sister Study, a prospective study of 50,000 women at risk for breast cancer and the GuLF STUDY, a prospective study of potential health effects associated with oil spill clean-up following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. She received a Ph.D. in epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and joined the NIEHS in 1979.

Kent Thomas - EPA
Mr. Thomas joined the Office of Research and Development at EPA as a research scientist in 1998. His research focuses on assessing human exposure to environmental contaminants in occupational, residential, building, and recreational settings. He has a B.S.P.H. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

AHS Coordinating Center

The AHS Coordinating Center is directed by:

Amy Miller and Marsha Dunn, Westat