Newly appointed Assistant Professor Derek Griffith didn't come to the University of Michigan to teach. In fact, if you ask him, he didn't really envision himself as a professor. His background and experience in community psychology, community based participatory research and activism would have led naturally to something outside of academia. "I was the person in grad school who thought I would never be in a faculty position," he recalled.

Working with Master's students through the CRECH training program and teaching a doctoral seminar in collaboration with Dr. Harold Neighbors has helped change Dr. Griffith's mind about teaching. "Once I actually taught, and enjoyed it, I started to realize that there are important issues that are not being taught at any school of public health," he explained.

For the past three years, Dr. Griffith has worked an assistant research scientist in HBHE, associate director of evaluation for the Prevention Research Center (PRC) and assistant director for research and research training for the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health (CRECH), roles he will continue in addition to his new appointment.

He has quickly gone from researcher to teacher and is thrilled at the prospect of creating the beginnings of a comprehensive health disparities curriculum in HBHE. His new course, to be offered in Winter 2008, will focus on interventions for addressing health inequalities and will be a complement to the current health disparities course.

Trained as a clinical community psychologist, Dr. Griffith sees the big picture in communities and values their strong partnerships and collaborations. This lens is evident in the ways he works within the University community as well. He is developing relationships across the University with other faculty and students interested in health inequalities, and engaging in plans for truly interdisciplinary research through formal University initiatives and partnerships. "One of the things that has been great is that there is a real movement on campus to do more interdisciplinary research and to actively build the structures to support the research," he said.

In addition to all of his other work, Dr. Griffith was recently awarded his first major grant from the American Cancer Society to study behavioral cancer risks in African American men and to design an intervention based on Dr. Ken Resnicow's Body and Soul program.

All in all, it's already been a tremendous year for Dr. Derek Griffith and through it all he exudes the passion and drive to make major contributions to our understanding of the complexities of health inequalities and lead toward strategies for real change.