His research looks at the effectiveness and function of programs, policy, personnel and training programs. Specifically, his research assesses the competence of the public health work force. As a result of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Edgar won a Robert Wood Johnson grant to assess bioterrorism preparedness among public health professionals in Illinois, Michigan and Kansas. Through that research, he learned that there was a set of competencies that public health officials were expected to have but no one had done the validation work to determine if those competencies in fact existed.