Dr. Jennifer Eaton is the Chief Occupational Medical Officer at Federal Occupational Health. She is board certified in Emergency Medicine, Occupational Medicine, and Clinical Informatics. She also got her MD and a Master’s in Public Health from UNC Chapel Hill and her Bachelors in Sociology and Afro-American Studies from Harvard. Dr. Eaton did her Residency on Emergency Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill and her fellowship in Occupational Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.

Jennifer Eaton was always surrounded by medical professionals. Her Godfather was a psychiatrist and from the age of 5 she thought she would follow in his footsteps and be a doctor as well. Her grandfather was also a club member and would host his meetings at their home on occasion. Also, club members were two physicians who worked for the federal government working on policies and programs but also had the opportunity to work in a clinic once or twice a week, which she believed would be an interesting job to take on. What most inspired her career choice was her mother being diagnosed with leukemia, which caused her to come very close to death and put her in a coma for three weeks. Due to the chemo and her mother’s immunosuppression, she developed an infection, and the doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. A doctor at the hospital called in a favor from a friend at the NIH who was a specialist in infectious diseases. The specialist evaluated her mother and suggested that she may have pneumococcus. Since the specialist worked with studies in HIV and AIDS, he was able to figure out what the infection was since it is also commonly seen in patients with AIDS. He proscribed Amphotericin, which is now commonly used for these types of opportunistic infections but was not as common in the late 1980’s during this time, and her mother woke up two days later. For 7^th grader Dr. Eaton this was a miracle and encouraged her to pursue a career that would make her an expert in a certain field and be able to make a major impact on an individual’s life.

Entering Undergrade Jennifer Eaton was not sure if she wanted to go through with being a doctor. She was not academically motivated at the time but was more motivated to do service works. Her senior year she decided to take a class in Harvard’s School of Public Health. She thought it was the coolest most amazing class ever and sparked her desire to go Pre-Med and go into Public Health. She then reached out to a Pre-Med advisor and took the GRE. After getting her Maters in Public Health she went to Medical School at UNC. She says she doesn’t regret taking a nontraditional track to medical school although it made her first year challenging. After her Residency at UNC and her fellowship at Hopkins she worked in Veterans’ Health Administration for 10 years. She then worked at the department of labor and then she worked in a private industry for six months and found that she didn’t like it. And she now works for the federal government.

Some of her basic roles are to write clinical policies and review medical officer work. She goes over complex medical cases for people with dangerous jobs to see if they can continue doing their job or if they need to be referred to another doctor. She also does subspeciality review clinically. Her favorite aspect of her job is the science of medicine and that she continues to learn new things. She also loves that on occasion she gets to do something to change a patient’s life. What was most surprising about her career choice is that it involves a lot of math which she hated growing up. But she has grown a love for statistics and coding which she does for her job. The most challenging aspect of her job is that she sometimes has to give up opportunities in leadership because she wants to put her children and family first.

Some advice she would give to someone going into the health field is to not be afraid to take your time and explore other fields. She believes its important to get to know other disciplines and different professions and different settings people work in and the different kinds of careers there are. She also believes it’s important to look at someone’s personal life to make sure it fits with the goals you want in your future like having children. She emphasized that it’s not always about the money, the freedom and time are often worth more than money.