ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y. — Olean native and St. Bonaventure University graduate Dr. John E. Vena will speak about his research and experiences as an epidemiologist, educator and mentor during his March 9-19 residency at St. Bonaventure and Jamestown Community College.
Vena, a spring 2020 Lenna Visiting Professor, was nominated for the professorship by the School of Health Professions at St. Bonaventure.
In addition to guest lecturing in classes including public health, health science, chemistry, human development and learning, Vena will present two lectures open to the public.
He will discuss “The Pivotal Legacy of Public Health in Western New York: A Call to Action” at 7 p.m. Monday, March 16, in the Athletics Hall of Fame in St. Bonaventure’s Reilly Center.
Jamestown Community College will host Vena for a March 18 presentation titled “Mysteries & Magic of Epidemiology and Public Health.” The program begins at noon in the Weeks Room, located in the Sheldon Center on the Jamestown Campus.
A graduate of Archbishop Walsh High School, Vena is a 1975 graduate of St. Bonaventure and received his Ph.D. in epidemiology from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1980. He joined the faculty at SUNY-Buffalo in 1981 as an assistant professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine; he was promoted to associate professor in 1987 and full professor in 1994.
A fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the American Epidemiological Society, Vena’s areas of research expertise include cancer epidemiology, community-based research, environmental health, epidemiology, occupational health, and reproductive and developmental health.
He serves as a member of the American Public Health Association, the Society for Epidemiologic Research and the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology. Throughout his career, he has been a major force and leader in providing the formal mechanisms for structured interdisciplinary graduate training programs and junior faculty mentoring.
He has 40 years of experience in environmental epidemiology and graduate training, and from 1985 to 2003 he was part of a team as co-investigator on Nation Institutes of Health grants to pioneer integration of biomarkers in epidemiology analytic studies to look at gene-environment interactions, exposure assessments and the use of Geographic Information Systems in epidemiologic research.
Vena’s current grant activities are on the topics of environmental influences on children’s health, environmental determinants of cancer, chronic kidney disease and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE); physical activity, stroke and cognitive function; stress and cardio-metabolic disease in police; longterm lung health after exposure to chlorine gas; and health effects of persistent organic pollutants.
