Received her Ph.D. from The University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston in 1977. She has been on the faculty of several medical schools, including 15 years at Baylor College of Medicine as the Chief of the Design and Analysis Unit in the Department of Medicine before joining the faculty of The University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston. While at Baylor she served as the director of the Data Management and Analysis Center for a neonatal seizure study.

Dr. Dunn is Co-Investigator for ALLHAT, sponsored by the NHLBI. She, together with Dr. Pillar and Dr. Ford, was responsible for the statistical analysis for the Journal of the American Medical Association publication reporting the major outcomes for the lipid-lowering portion of ALLHAT. She currently serves as the statistician on a number of the writing committees for ALLHAT.