Biography
Dr. Rowland received a BA in health and society from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, an MA in sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1986, and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1992. He completed his postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in 1994, and worked as a member of the Reproductive Epidemiology Branch at NIEHS before joining UNM in 2001.
After receiving his Master’s degree Dr. Rowland worked at the Labor Occupational Health Project in the Institute of Industrial Relations at U.C. Berkeley where he helped document the hazards faced by minority workers. He then worked for three years in Occupational Health Branch of the New Jersey Department of Health where he worked on investigations of asbestos exposure in State Maintenance Workers and on documenting the potential hazards in the chemical industry. At NIEHS, Dr. Rowland worked on studies of female dental assistants exposed to nitrous oxide and mercury vapor, of farmworkers chronically exposed to pesticides, on the British AlSPAC pregnancy study, and on the Agricultural Health study, a study of the impact of pesticides on the health of famers in Iowa and North Carolina. In 1998 he began the Johnston County ADHD study a study of all the elementary school children in one NC county to estimate the prevalence and risk factors for ADHD.
Areas of Specialty
- Perinatal Epidemiology
- Psychiatric Epidemiology
- ADHD
- Neuro-Epidemiology
- Undergraduate teaching
Research
Dr. Rowland received a R01 to follow-up the Johnston County cohort. He also was a co-investigator on the National Children’s study, a co-investigator a series of studies of neurologic disease among the Navajo, and a study of sports related head injury among New Mexico Middle and High School students. He is currently working on a paper about the role of toxic stress during pregnancy on the risk of ADHD. He currently is also working on Dr. Soto Mas’s study of small-scale organic farmers in the Southwest, on the NM PRAMS follow-up study of toddler health and on national study trying to improve retention rates for underserved students in STEM and Health fields.
Courses Taught
Dr. Rowland has been teaching in both the BSPH and MPH programs. He is currently teaching Perinatal Epidemiology in the MPH program and Introduction to Population Health and Population Health Research Methods in the BSPH program. Dr. Rowland is a Provost Teaching fellow and, in that capacity, he is working on a project with other UNM faculty to use active teaching methods to teach students in the first two years of college about the value of research and learning basic research skills. The long-term objective is to promote diversity in student success in STEM and Health Major fields (including population health).
- Intro to Population Health, Population Health Research Methods
- Perinatal Epidemiology, Developmental Epidemiology, Psychiatric Epidemiology