Rienna G. Russo, M.H.S.

Rienna Russo, M.H.S., joined DCEG as a predoctoral fellow in the Radiation Epidemiology Branch (REB) in July 2024. Ms. Russo is currently a doctoral candidate in epidemiology and a master's candidate in biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts. Her Ph.D. research focuses on leveraging observational data and causal inference methods to identify strategies for cardiovascular disease prevention when data from clinical trials are unavailable or insufficient. She previously worked on an agent-based modeling study examining the impact of food policy on cardiovascular disease in New York City at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Ms. Russo earned her B.A. in public health and cognitive science in 2017 and her M.H.S. in epidemiology in 2018, from Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, respectively, in Baltimore, Maryland.

In REB, Ms. Russo is emulating a trial of statin use in the Kaiser Permanente Breast Cancer Survivors cohort to investigate the effectiveness of statins for cardiovascular disease prevention in breast cancer survivors as part of her dissertation research, under the mentorship of Jacqueline B. Vo, Ph.D., R.N, M.P.H.