Kristen Rohde (BS UW '97) earned a Masters of Arts in Sociology with a minor in Statistics from UW in 1999. After graduating, she returned to her home town of Portland, Oregon and began a career in applied public health research and evaluation. For the past seven years, she has worked with Program Design and Evaluation Services (PDES), a unique research and evaluation unit within both the Multnomah County Health Department and Oregon Public Health Division. PDES provides ongoing evaluation support to county and state programs, initiates and conducts applied research studies, and contracts with organizations across the country to improve community health, shape public policy, and reduce health disparities. Specializing in the field of tobacco control, Kristen has collaborated on or managed projects to evaluate and inform state-level tobacco control programs in Oregon, Washington and Alaska. To date she has 12 publications in the scientific literature along with numerous research reports and presentations. Most notably, she was the project manager for a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded study to examine biomarkers for smoking-related carcinogens among nonsmoking employees exposed to secondhand smoke while at work in Oregon bars. Results were published in the American Journal of Public Health and in the mainstream media (e.g., Time Magazine), and were used to advocate for policies to protect workers from secondhand smoke. Her interests outside of work are much the same as they were in Laramie--hiking, skiing and snowshoeing, but she now enjoys these activities alongside her husband, Chris, and their young daughter, Anna.
