Cory Cole

Cory Cole is a senior violence epidemiologist at the Minnesota Department of Health, where she supports statewide initiatives to prevent and respond to sexual and intimate partner violence, adverse childhood experiences, and perinatal injury. She is passionate about integrating principles from the violence prevention movement like consent, autonomy, and broadly-defined justice into applied epidemiology practices. Cole received her Master’s Degree in Epidemiology from the Celia Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in 2019. After graduation, she served as a Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists Applied Epidemiology Fellow at Minnesota Department of Health, where she would eventually become a permanent employee. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, organizing with her community in the Twin Cities, and visiting family in the Greater Kansas City Area.

The Minnesota Department of Health is a major hub of injury and violence prevention work in the state. Within their Division of Injury Prevention and Mental Health, the Sexual Violence Prevention Programs team administers funds from the CDC’s Rape Prevention and Education program. In collaboration with several statewide anti-violence coalitions including Violence Free Minnesota and the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition to convene partners, share data, and strategically coordinate prevention efforts. This team collaborates with other health department program areas like human trafficking prevention, suicide prevention, and substance use epidemiology to enact a data-driven, multi-pronged approach to injury and violence prevention in Minnesota. Division staff identify shared risk and protective factors, support the building blocks of community health, and achieve the overarching goals of the Injury and Violence Prevention State Plan.