Faculty

Uplifting residents, neighborhoods and communities throughout Michigan

Dean F. DuBois Bowman

The University of Michigan School of Public Health is working to uplift residents, neighborhoods and communities throughout Michigan. This takes many shapes, including a project to improve the workplace and living conditions for Michigan’s 96,000 migrant and seasonal farmworkers; research to quantify the impact of environmental exposures in our state on cancer risk; a pilot project to provide guaranteed monthly payments to individuals in Ann Arbor who have low incomes; and much more.

Kris Sarri: Combating climate change with a policy pen

Kris Sarri, MPH ’97, exemplifies the University of Michigan mission of becoming leaders and best through her lifelong dedication to bettering the earth’s health through policy and action. Today, Sarri’s storied career is built upon two decades of work in Washington, DC, at the highest levels of the federal government.

Louise Merriman's lifelong dedication to nutrition culminates in planned gift to Nutritional Sciences

Culinary medicine is something Louise Merriman holds “near and dear to her heart”—a concept she has incorporated in her career as a Registered Dietitian for nearly 40 years. Merriman is supporting the University of Michigan School of Public Health’s Department of Nutritional Sciences through a new, seven-figure planned gift, the Drs. Kenneth Scott and Amherst Merriman Culinary Medicine Fund.

Tackling noise closer to home

In addition to the work on e-waste, Rick Neitzel and the Exposure Research Lab continue to study how noise affects health. In Detroit and throughout the United States, interstate freeways were historically built through African American communities often with the goal of breaking them up or segregating them from white communities.

Exposure Research Lab helps informal e-waste recyclers, communities in other countries

The Exposure Research Lab at the University of Michigan School of Public Health has been studying how to make this informal recycling work safer. Rick Neitzel founded the lab when he arrived at Michigan Public Health in 2011. The lab studies how to keep workers safe and healthy throughout their careers, with particular focus on noise exposure and injury risks.

Sara Adar's research informs the EPA and helps safeguard kids

‘Changing the world because of my science’

Sara Adar jokes that her kids have grown tired of her antics—as she puts it, they are “very much over me.” Although her 14-year-old twins still call her “Science Mom,” they no longer participate when she stops the car at a moment’s notice to go play in traffic, testing some level of environmental disturbance. Fortunately for the rest of us, Adar is still “playing in traffic.”