Buzzing through her graduate studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Mary Hayden discovered her life’s work. Her research for her postgraduate degree in the health and behavioral sciences program focused on mosquito-borne diseases, and from this research, she has developed a career focused on educating communities about health threats transmitted by mosquitoes.

Since earning her PhD in 2003, Hayden’s career has flourished. She has developed culturally diverse communication vehicles to educate vulnerable populations, such as migrant workers, about the risks of mosquito-borne illnesses including West Nile Disease. She and colleagues recently were recognized by the American Public Health Association for these materials.

Hayden is particularly concerned about the emergence of dengue fever, a tropical disease, in a desert climate. Dengue fever is an arboviral disease, carried by arthropods such as mosquitoes and ticks, that has worldwide impact. She is committed to developing interventions to slow or halt the further expansion of dengue and to efficiently focus preventive efforts.

Hayden has worked as project director and co-principal investigator of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded study investigating the roles of climate variability and human-environmental interactions on the potential for dengue fever to emerge along the U.S./Mexico border in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. In collaboration with the Center for Disease Control’s Border Infectious Disease Surveillance program, she was part of an investigation of an outbreak of dengue fever in December 2005 in Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico, to document the first case of locally acquired dengue hemorrhagic fever in the United States.

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