Faculty: Suzanne Lea

• Ken Buday

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On a quest to become an environmental lawyer, Dr. Suzanne Lea had a revelation.

"It was more about arguing in and out of the regulations and not so much about incorporating new science into the regulations," she said.

Lea wanted to do more, wanted to understand how environmental quality affects health. She said that suited her interests more than law. That revelation started her on a path to East Carolina University, where she's a professor and researcher in the Department of Public Health at the Brody School of Medicine.

Research and Students

Lea has spent the past 18 years at ECU teaching students and researching the relationship between environmental quality and health. She has explored childhood leukemia and melanoma skin cancer. Most recently, Lea has been working with researchers at N.C. State investigating possible health impacts from per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances - also known as forever chemicals - in the Cape Fear River basin.

She was on the frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, helping determine how people would maintain their immunities.

"We concentrated on the students and community members in terms of what was going on with the infection because once you get infected, you mount an antibody response, and then you can measure how long certain antibodies are positive," Lea said. "Certain markers of immune status wane over time, and we wanted to understand more about that."

At the heart of her work are students who she said have the greater good in mind.

"The students are very altruistic and very much want to help people," Lea said. "The students also have a servant's heart, just like our motto. So many students that I've interacted with are really driven to serve others, and in public health, that's largely what you do."

A Career Journey

When Lea decided in the 1980s that environmental law was not for her, she consulted with her boss, who suggested public health.

"I didn't know what public health was," Lea said. "He explained to me that some of the work I had been doing was related to public health."

After getting her doctoral degree in epidemiology and conducting post-doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, she began working for the health department in San Francisco. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, she decided to move closer to family and took a consulting job in North Carolina.

That work produced a chance meeting with Dr. Doyle "Skip" Cummings, a professor of public health at ECU.

"I was working on a project to build a surveillance system for chronic kidney disease, and eastern North Carolina is where chronic kidney disease is highest in the state," Lea said.

Cummings mentioned a faculty opening that piqued Lea's interest.

"The program was relatively new, and it was a chance to be a new faculty member in a new department and build out the public health workforce for eastern North Carolina," Lea said. "I really liked the mission of our department, and I really liked being able to teach and be in a small academic department and do the kinds of work that I had been doing but on a smaller scale in a community-focused atmosphere."

During her time at ECU, Lea was elected president of the N.C. Public Health Association and received that organization's Distinguished Service Award. She also received the Special Training Award from the International Agency for Research on Cancer at the World Health Organization in Lyon, France.

Lea has been heavily involved in curriculum development in the Department of Public Health, just one reason she received the Master Educator Award for curriculum administration and leadership at the Brody School of Medicine.

"I was very humbled," she said.

'Come Sail Away'

While a student at UC Berkeley, Lea looked out her office window and spotted numerous sailboats on the bay.

Drawn to the water and having some sailing experience, she took lessons at the local sailing club. "And over time, I started sailboat racing," she said. "Sailboat racing out in the San Francisco Bay is not like wearing a bikini and standing around on your boat. It's foggy and it's cold, and it's windy, but I loved it."

Lea enjoys running and playing tennis, but one of her favorite pastimes is attending ECU theater and musical performances. She still recalls seeing her first performance as a guest of a friend shortly after her arrival at ECU.

"I was blown away at these kids. I couldn't believe it," she said. "… They were so professional, and I'd never seen anything like it in a student performance. It's like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get, but you know it's going to be awesome."