Courtesy of Audrey L. Blewer
Audrey Blewer had an early interest in history, concentrating on Latin America at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Along the way, though, she took an interest in public health and switched to that discipline for her master’s degree at the school, studying the health of imprisoned women. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is now an assistant professor of family medicine and community health at Duke University School of Medicine. Her recent studies in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) incidents, the subject of her dissertation, have shown that women receive it less often than men, leading to the development of a CPR dummy with breasts for professional and civilian training. Her further studies suggest that CPR training dissemination strategies can be expanded and better fitted to address geographic, racial, and socioeconomic disparities in CPR education and delivery, especially at the hands of civilian bystanders.