University of Michigan researchers have partnered with the Michigan Farm Bureau to understand the unique challenges rural families face when accessing nutritious meals through food assistance. Often, these programs are designed without the user perspective in mind and are implemented in ways that many families do not find accessible or respectful.
Becoming a violence exposure researcher wasn’t initially the plan for Hsing-Fang Hsieh, MPH '06, PhD '12, but an introduction to a University of Michigan School of Public Health faculty member and subsequent work on a youth resilience study paved the way for her new research path. Now she is a research assistant professor at the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention spearheading firearm violence prevention research, an area that has historically been understudied and underfunded.
Colleagues Susan Marsiglia Gray, MPH ’01, and Tasha Akitobi, MPH ’05, share so much common ground, they practically read each other’s minds. That comes in handy because their federal government workplace, the Provider Relief Bureau, is responsible for $200 billion in COVID relief funding. While their partnership is somewhat new—with only about 18 months of being on the job together—their paths to public health have created deep familiarity.
Traditionally, the sunflower is emblematic to Ukraine—but it signifies so much more to the Ukrainian people, and especially Oksana Fedorak. “Our national flower is the sunflower—it means a lot to us and me personally,” said Fedorak, a Master of Public Health student in Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on the travel industry and on the field of international education. But it has helped global public health come to grips with its colonial past and articulate its goals in ways that are truer to the mission of public health itself.
When Heather Lanthorn assumed the role of program director of the new Mercury Project at the Social Science Research Council in December 2021, she was ecstatic. Not only was she helping to build the field around a current phenomenon with long-term implications, but she also was returning to her roots and work that led her to the University of Michigan School of Public Health and deepened while she was there.