School of Public Health
Voice: 734-936-1316
Fax: 734-764-4338
Department of Health Management and Policy
109 Observatory
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2029
Director: Richard Lichtenstein
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Faculty mentors from each of the School's departments: Biostatistics, Environmental Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Health Behavior and Health Education and Health Management and Policy; participation in various seminar series; courses in topics such as community-based participatory research, community organization and needs assessment; opportunities for working with faculty on community-based participatory research partnerships, and writing and publishing in peer-reviewed journals. The School of Public Health also maintains an Office of Community-Based Public Health whose role is to facilitate opportunities for students and faculty members to link-up with community partners as part of their class work and to conduct community-based participatory research projects.
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Richard Lichtenstein, Ph.D. is director of the University of Michigan Training Site. Dr. Lichtenstein is an associate professor of Health Management and Policy. He received both his M.P.H. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in medical care organization, and a B.S. from Cornell University in industrial and labor relations.
Dr. Lichtenstein is currently the co-principal investigator of the CDC-funded Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center, which is working with several community-based groups in Detroit to conduct intervention research projects. He is leading an effort to enroll uninsured children in the Community Health Insurance Program or Medicaid and to study the effects of insurance on these children’s health status and utilization of services. In addition, he is also involved in a project studying the effects of organizational structure on the performance of staff in VA long-term psychiatric facilities. Dr. Lichtenstein is also the director of the University of Michigan’s Summer Enrichment Program in Health Management (for undergraduate minority students), whose goal is to increase diversity in the public health work force.
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The University of Michigan School of Public Health has a long history of collaboration with a number of community-based organizations and several health Departments in Michigan, including those in Detroit, Wayne County, Genesee County and other areas of the state. Settings for community-based participatory research include the following.
The Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (URC), established in 1995 through a Cooperative Agreement with the CDC, is a collaborative partnership involving the UM Schools of Public Health and Nursing, the Detroit Health Department, six community-based organizations (Butzel Family Center, Community Health and Social Services (CHASS), Friends of Parkside, Kettering Butzel Health Initiative, Latino Family Services, and Warren/Conner Development Coalition), and Henry Ford Health System. The URC engages in interdisciplinary, community-based participatory research (CBPR) with the goal of improving the health and quality of life of families and communities on the east and southwest sides of Detroit. The URC's priority areas for developing and implementing CBPR projects are: improving access to quality health care, environmental health issues and violence prevention. Current URC projects include: Eastside Village Health Worker Partnership (a lay health worker project that is examining the social determinants of women's health and developing interventions to improve women's health); LA VIDA (Southwest Detroit Partnership to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence Against Latina Women); REACH Detroit Detroit (focusing on reducing racial/ethnic disparities in diabetes); Healthy Environments Partnership (examining the relationships between socioeconomic status,the physical environment, social stressors and risk of cardiovascular disease); Promoting Healthy Lifestyles for Women (promoting healthy weight, eating and physical activity for overweight women and pregnant women); and two projects focusing on children and families without health insurance -The Eastside Access Partnership and the Bilingual Medicaid Managed Care Program.
Michigan Center for the Environment & Children's Health (MCECH) is a multi-project initiative working to improve the environment and children's health, with funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The overall goal of MCECH is to investigate the environmental, pathophysiological and clinical mechanisms of childhood asthma, and to develop and evaluate comprehensive community and household level interventions aimed at reducing asthma-related environmental threats to individuals and neighborhoods. The Center includes Community Action Against Asthma (CAAA), a community-based participatory research project that involves multi-level interventions to examine environmental and psychosocial triggers for asthma in children's homes and neighborhoods and to reduce these triggers through community-based interventions. In addition to the URC partners listed above, MCECH involves the UM School of Medicine, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, United Community Housing Coalition, Detroit Hispanic Development Coalition, and the Michigan Department of Agriculture, Office of Pesticide and Plant Pest Management.
Prevention Research Center of Michigan (PRC), a CDC-funded Center that builds upon existing partnerships between the School of Public Health, community-based organizations, local health departments and the Michigan Department of Community Health. The Center conducts community-based, participatory prevention research aimed at improving the health status and reducing morbidity and mortality among populations experiencing a disproportionate share of poor health outcomes. Current Projects include: Asthma Prevention and Intervention in Impoverished Children; Development of a Children's Dental Surveillance System; Enhancing Adolescent Behaviors through Strengthening Father-Son Relationships; Genesee Co. REACH Project (focusing on reducing infant mortality); Neighborhood Violence Prevention Collaborative Evaluation; Youth Violence Prevention Center; Prevention Centers Tobacco Network; and, Stopping Gonorrhea Transmission in Genesee County.
The Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS),
provides comprehensive services for the large and diverse Arab American community located in Dearborn, Michigan. The ACCESS Community Health Center operates 15 health and medical programs, which utilize a holistic approach to the health care needs of the community.
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