Growing up in New York City, Caroline Powell (MS ‘26) surprised herself when her passion for public health led her to the fields of Iowa, studying peoples’ perceptions of cancer in agricultural communities. She’ll be the first to say, there’s a big gap between what people know about cancer, what they think they know, and how they act. An Agricultural Safety and Health Master of Science candidate, Powell has put this dissonance to task, having spent the past two years studying cancer perception in Iowa. Now in her waning days in Iowa, she’s putting together her findings.
“We have really strong epidemiological data,” she explains. “But it’s one thing to know the numbers, and another to understand how people interpret them.”
Iowa has the second-highest rate of cancer in the country and is one of a few states that has rising rates of cancer, according to an annual report by the Iowa Cancer Registry. Rather than a narrow focus on incidence rates, Powell asks a more foundational question: how do people actually understand cancer in the first place? Powell’s findings will help public health professionals design strategies that reflect the environmental and social contexts of agricultural life and work.
Her thesis research explores cancer perceptions across a range of agricultural identities—from farm owners and workers to family members and nearby residents. Through a survey, she examined how beliefs about cancer risk influence engagement with public health information and prevention behaviors such as well water testing and wearing personal protective equipment.
From city to cornstalks
Powell has come to know her way around the gravel roads connecting the sea of corn and soybeans and hog operations that blanket the state. It’s the last thing she expected growing up in Queens, New York City, and then spending four years in Washington D.C. at American University studying international relations. “It wasn’t until my last year that I found public health,” Powell said. But when she found it, everything shifted.
After graduation, Powell began looking for public health opportunities through the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control and was eventually placed at the Iowa Cancer Consortium through CDC's Public Health Associate Program working on statewide cancer prevention and control. Then, when her two years were up, she’d realized she had built such strong relationships with the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa, she thought, “Why not get the master’s?”
A complex risk landscape
Cancer, Powell emphasizes, does not have a single cause. Instead, it emerges from a combination of genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors over time.
“It’s multifactorial,” she says. “There’s no one thing you can point to.”
In agricultural settings, that complexity is especially visible. Farmers may benefit from protective factors like physical activity and lower rates of smoking and alcohol consumption, while also facing increased exposure to risks such as sun exposure, diesel exhaust, and chemical pesticides.
At the same time, she stresses that risk is not just an individual responsibility.
“We tend to focus on individual behaviors,” she says. “But the systems people live in matter just as much.”
Listening to communities
One of Powell’s key findings is both simple and overlooked: people in agricultural communities care deeply about cancer.
“There’s sometimes a perception that people don’t care, or aren’t paying attention,” she says. “That hasn’t been my experience at all.”
For Powell, this highlights the need for clearer, more accessible communication.
“A lot of people are getting headlines, not full reports,” she says. “We need to do a better job explaining what we know, and what we don’t know.”
Rural and agricultural communities, she notes, are often misunderstood—sometimes portrayed as homogeneous or disconnected, when in reality they are diverse, adaptive, and deeply interconnected.
That awareness has shaped her approach to research. Rather than positioning herself as an outside expert, Powell emphasizes listening, relationship-building, and humility.
“You don’t know what you don’t know,” she says. “There’s so much expertise in lived experience.”
Her work underscores the importance of collaboration across disciplines. At Iowa, she has worked closely with faculty in toxicology and occupational health, including mentors like Diane Rohlman, professor of occupational and environmental health, who has guided her research design, and Jong Sung Kim, associate professor of occupational environmental health, whose teaching has influenced her interest in science communication.
Looking ahead
After completing her degree, Powell will continue her work in cancer prevention and communication as a Ph.D. student at Virginia Commonwealth University, focusing on health communication.