Education:

2002, Epidemiology, MS, University of Iowa

1999, Microbiology, BS, Northern Arizona University

_Cross-Border Preparedness: An Invaluable Cooperative Partnership; Article produced for the Arizona Borderlands Democrats, "Shades of Blue", Nogales International. (January, 2006).

Languages Spoken:

English, Spanish

Since 2002, Brenda Granillo, MS, has served the public health arena and has worked in positions that include a public health laboratorian, a surveillance officer, an epidemiologist, and a public health preparedness curriculum developer, educator and trainer. She has expertise in mobilizing and engaging community public health partners to help identify the barriers and challenges in emergency preparedness and response efforts in addition to working collaboratively to bridge the gaps by implementing competency-based education and training programs.

Granillo has worked with the Arizona Department of Health Services, Office of Border Health, as a border surveillance epidemiologist. Her duties included working closely and on-site with border counties and tribes to provide hands-on technical assistance in the development and maintenance of disease surveillance systems. She also provided technical support in binational emergency public health preparedness and planning activities.

Currently, she is the Director for the Arizona Center for Public Health Preparedness (AzCPHP) at The University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. AzCPHP is part of a national network of academic institutions working in collaboration with state and local public health departments and other community partners to provide life-long learning opportunities to the public health workforce. Its goal is to strengthen the public health workforce readiness to respond to terrorism and other public health threats. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the AzCPHP aims to improve the capacity of the public health workforce to respond to an all-hazard type of public health emergency in Arizona and the Southwest.

Granillo earned her master’s degree in epidemiology in 2002 from the University of Iowa. After earning her degree, she was recruited to the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory as an Emerging Infectious Diseases Training Fellow, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Her fellowship project entailed Arbovirus Surveillance, with an emphasis on serologic and molecular diagnostics for the detection of West Nile virus antibodies/viral RNA in human sera and cerebral spinal fluid, mosquito pools and avian brain tissues. Her fellowship experience helped to bridge the relationship between epidemiology capacity and the laboratory.