Last updated on October 10th, 2024 at 02:09 pm
Associate Professor, UNMC College of Public Health Department of Environmental, Agricultural, and Occupational Health
Cheryl Beseler, PhD, is the evaluator for the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health (CS-CASH), housed at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. She holds a doctorate in environmental epidemiology and master’s degrees in statistics and biochemistry. For six years, she was the evaluator for Alternatives for Youth, a substance abuse treatment program for youth and their families. With collaborators in the Center for Crimes Against Children at the University of New Hampshire, she has completed an evaluation of Google’s Be Internet Awesome internet security and digital citizenship program in 14 schools nationwide. In recent years, her evaluation work has been primarily focused on conducting evaluation of the High Plains Intermountain Center for Agricultural Health and Safety programs and activities and she currently is working with the CS-CASH team to assist with measuring the impact and reach of their center activities. Her work included promoting evidence-based learning strategies in community college mathematics classrooms.
In addition to more than a decade of experience conducting large-scale evaluations, she has designed and carried out epidemiological studies on agricultural health and safety issues for the past 20 years. Since 2000, her research areas have been in studying pesticide exposure and other injury, as well as depression and stress in the agricultural community. Her early work in agriculture involved studying the effects of pesticide exposure on depression in farm families in Colorado and later reproducing the results in the Agricultural Health study. In the past few years, she has been focusing on stress in farm families and has conducted several qualitative research studies to better understand community stakeholder perspectives.