Jessica Trowbridge

Jessica Trowbridge is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation work seeks to characterize exposure levels and uncover novel chemical exposures among women fire fighters in San Francisco as part of the Women Firefighters Biomonitoring Collaborative, a community based participatory research partnership between San Francisco Firefighter Cancer Prevention Foundation, United Fire Service Women, community advocate organizations and research scientists. The study was initiated by firefighters concerned about high rates of breast cancer among their colleagues and potential workplace exposures that may elevate cancer risk. With this work, Jessica seeks to contribute novel methods and collaborative approaches to better understand hazardous workplace exposures among women, who are chronically understudied and underrepresented in research, in order to inform prevention efforts that protect worker health. Jessica grew up binationally between Mexico and the United States. Her experience observing the impact of environmental exposures on public health in Mexico and the communities where she lived in the US motivates her work to understand and mitigate environmental health disparities. Jessica is a proud community college transfer student to UC Berkeley. Having herself taken a non-traditional educational path, Jessica is passionate about making college and STEM fields accessible to other non-traditional students including low income and first generation college students. Jessica completed her BS in Molecular Environmental Biology in 2003 and her MPH in Environmental Health Sciences in 2011 from UC Berkeley.