Ph.D. Student, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Anthony Orsino was a first-year Ph.D. student at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio when the Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio then caught fire and burned for several days while releasing hazardous compounds into the local environment.
After doing rotations, Orsino had just decided on a lab to study in when the accident occurred. “Some environmental health epidemiologists here rallied and brainstormed about how to help, given that we were one of the largest universities close to East Palestine. It ended up that one of the research teams got funding from NIEHS [the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences] and they were gracious enough to take me on as a student. It was just so perfectly in alignment with my research interest and what I wanted to explore in my dissertation.”
Orsino had not always planned to get a Ph.D. As an undergraduate at American University in Washington D.C. Orsino majored in public health with a concentration in biostatistics and a minor in health promotion. “I originally thought I was just going to do a fifth year to get my master’s in biostats and become a biostatistician. I wasn’t in love with that idea, but it seemed like the best deal I could get.”
Things changed when Orsino enrolled in a Biostatistics Summer Training Program run by the University of Southern California the summer before his senior year. A professor in the program encouraged him to pursue a Ph.D. “That was the catalyst for me,” said Orsino. “I’m so glad I made that decision and that one experience at University of South California led me to eventually join this fellowship—definitely a butterfly effect.”
By ‘this fellowship’ Orsino means the Center for Disaster Resilient Communities’ summer training program IDEAAL DR2. In 2024, Orsino joined 25 other environmental and public health disaster researchers from across the United States to gain new research methods and skills as part of the program’s first cohort.
“We always hear that public health is so interdisciplinary and these problems don’t live in silos, but I have never been to another training program that had such an interface among disciplines.”
So far the best part of IDEAAL DR2 for Orsino has been the networking. “No one else in my program at Case Western is doing disaster epidemiology so it was really great to share the experiences of training in this niche field with other people who are not only in my position, but have gone through my position and are now postdocs or early faculty. It was also great hearing from faculty like Nicole [Errett] that are dedicated to this and have a flourishing career in the field.”
He especially appreciated the opportunity to interact with people outside his field. “We always hear that public health is so interdisciplinary and these problems don’t live in silos, but I have never been to another training program that had such an interface among disciplines.” Orsino especially enjoyed meeting an engineer who also worked on the East Palestine train derailment and whose work he had cited.
For his dissertation Orsino is constructing two social networks associated with the East Palestine train derailment. The first is of the planned emergency response that’s required to happen by law and regulations whenever there’s a chemical disaster. The second is of what actually happened based on newspaper articles, reports, and other publicly available documents. Once the two are complete, he will compare them using social network analysis to understand whether and how they differ. As a last step he will contact people in the organizations in the networks and talk to them about whether differences between the planned and actual networks were helpful or burdensome. Ultimately, he hopes that his work will help highlight disparities in rural disaster preparedness throughout the American Midwest.
It is a rare approach. Orsino, who is self-taught in social network analysis, first found out about the method when he came across a paper that compared planned vs. actualized networks in an area that had experienced an earthquake in China. “I think it’s such a brilliant design and it hasn’t been done in any rural settings yet,” said Orsino. “I’m so happy I found that paper—another butterfly effect example.”
Orsino was rewriting his dissertation proposal at the time of the week-long IDEAAL DR2 workshop in Seattle last summer. “It was so nice to be with my people for a week and talk through problems. My peers asked questions that got my gears turning again.” After the workshop, Orsino stayed in touch with his cohort during monthly webinars.
Soon he will present his dissertation proposal to his committee and hopefully a year and a half later he will get his doctorate. After that he is interested in exploring the One Health aspects of disaster epidemiology and perhaps serving with the Epidemic Intelligence Service through the Centers for Disease Control. The Epidemic Intelligence Service offers two-year fellowships for epidemiologists to train in infectious disease outbreaks and how to monitor them, tackle them with boots on the ground and conduct research on them.
In the end he hopes his work can be translational and will help to advance health and reduce health disparities. “I want to have an impact,” said Orsino, “a tangible, measurable impact.”