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Mr. Nicholas Blatto MPH, is Associate Director of Epidemiology and Public Health at Seneca Scientific Solutions+. Nicholas is from Buffalo, New York. He spent his childhood in East Lovejoy before moving to North Buffalo where his family currently resides. He now lives in Rochester, NY with his partner who is attending medical school at the University of Rochester. He is Italian American and loves to learn about his culture through stories, food, and traditional practices.
Mr. Blatto is a recent epidemiology MPH graduate from University at Buffalo. Outside of his Bachelor’s and Master’s public health educational programs, Nicholas has been involved in numerous public health projects which have advanced his knowledge in descriptive and analytic epidemiological principles and practices. On the descriptive side, Nicholas interned at the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) in their Healthcare Epidemiology and Infection Control program, assisting healthcare regional epidemiologists acquire and closeout Nosocomial Outbreak Reporting Applications. He learned the protocols and practices of preventing healthcare-associated infections in hospitals and long-term care facilities. He also interned with the Erie County Department of Health in their Epidemiology and Disease Control office, performing case interviews of gastrointestinal reportable diseases and conducting descriptive analyses of NYS reportable disease data. Prior to both of these, Nicholas served as a contact tracer and surge case investigator for the NYSDOH COVID-19 Initiative during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the analytic side of epidemiology, he recently worked as a protocol data manager for Frontier Science and Technology Research Foundation where he learned some foundational methods of ensuring clinical trial data integrity and accuracy. He currently volunteers as a research assistant, conducting a scoping review on the association between toxic metal mixture exposure and child physical growth. He also held two undergraduate internships at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, focused on tobacco epidemiological research.
Nicholas has developed a passion for Indigenous health equity, justice for the disenfranchised and combating racial and ethnic health disparities. Nicholas worked to operationalize a NYS grant focused on identifying, educating, and addressing the emergency preparedness needs of Indigenous populations regarding COVID-19 in NYS. He led the development of a Native-tailored COVID-19 training on the etiology of the virus, prevention and vaccination. He led the development of an instructional guide on "How to Develop an Indigenous Emergency Operations Center" for our NYS American Indian populations. Prior to this grant, he also worked with his Field Epidemiology colleagues to create a presentation on how to put “Data into Action - Responding to Infectious Disease Outbreaks” for the National Indian Health Board. The presentation focused on integrating foundational epidemiological principles that can be applied to an Indigenous public health department. For the past four years, Nicholas also has been a volunteer with the FruitBelt Coalition and now serves as a junior board member. As a minority run non-profit Buffalo community health organization, he works with Coalition and community members to improve the quality of life for members of the Fruitbelt neighborhood as well as other low socioeconomic areas in Buffalo, NY. This is mainly accomplished through developing and hosting community events to increase economic support and health resources for at-risk population subgroups, such as African American and individuals of low socioeconomic status. These experiences have potentiated his passion for combating health disparities experienced by socially disadvantaged groups through evidence-based, public health practices.