2008 Accolades
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Fall 2008
Recently named Rhodes Scholar Abdul El-Sayed is currently pursuing both a medical degree from the UM Medical School and a doctoral degree in epidemiology from UM’s School of Public Health, as a student in the prestigious dual degree Medical Scientist Training Program. El-Sayed’s current research interests include the social determinants of health, Arab-American health, the social determinants of neurological disorders, and the etiology of neural tube defects in Guatemala. More info.
 SPH's Mark Padilla is a co-winner of the 2008 Ruth Benedict Prize for outstanding scholarship on a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender topic (book category). He received the award at the Nov. 22, 2008 American Anthropological Association annual meeting in San Francisco for his ethnography Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic. It was presented during the business meeting of SOLGAS (The Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists).
Three SPH faculty members have recently been named Collegiate Professors at the University of Michigan. Paula Lantz will be the S.J. Axelrod Collegiate Professor of Health Management and Policy; she currently serves as chair of the HMP department at UM SPH. Professor Goncalo Abecasis of the Biostatistics department and Professor Neal Krause of Health Behavior and Health Education will also be honored as Collegiate Professors for their exceptional contributions to research, teaching, and service.
Two UM Center for Statistical Genetics trainees were honored at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. Biostatistics student Yun Li won an award for the best abstract and presentation among pre-doctoral candidates in the basic sciences with "Efficient Reconstruction of Whole Genomes Using Massively Parallel Shotgun Sequence Data." Alumna Karen Conneely (Ph.D. Biostatistics 2008) was one of two recipients of the Cotterman Award, which honors the best papers by a graduate or post-graduate student. Mor info.
A sampling of UM SPH awards at the 2008 APHA annual meeting:
- Ana Diez Roux, SPH professor of epidemiology, received the Wade Hampton Frost Award and gave the Frost Lecture.
- Dr. Farideh Kioumehr-Dadsetan, M.P.H. '71 and Dr.P.H. '73, received the first-ever APHA Sidel-Levy Award for Peace She is founder of the Anti-Violence Day Project, an ongoing violence prevention/intervention project of the International Health & Epidemiology Research Center that strives to eliminate mortality and morbidity in children/youth.
- The winner of the 2008 Drotman Award for young professionals is Tracy Finlayson, a Ph.D. grad of the UM SPH Health Services Organization and Policy program.
- Melvin Shipp, a Dr.P.H. from SPH, received the APHA Executive Director’s Citation.
The Office of Public Health Practice at the University of Michigan School of Public Health received the 2008 annual Public Health Community Achievement Award in October. It was awarded jointly by the Michigan Association for Local Public Health (MALPH) and the Michigan Public Health Association (MPHA). The UM SPH Office of Public Health Practice was praised for its "strong history of collaborating with and providing funding and personnel support to the public health community" through conference sponsosrhip, internship placement, collaborative projects, scholarships, training, and more.
For the third time in the past 4 years, the University of Michigan led the nation in the number of Fulbright student award recipients. Three SPH students were among those receiving Fulbright awards for 2008-2009. Their names, projects, and locations for study are as follows:
- Katharine Allen, SPH/CMENAS – Oman: Understanding and Learning from the Successes of Oman’s Healthcare System
- Lisa Calhoun, SPH – Kenya: Determination of Disease Burden in Street Children of Kisumu, Kenya
- John Zimmerman, SPH - Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan Transformations in Disaster Relief Policies
Summer 2008
 The Regents of the University of Michigan have named Michael Boehnke of UM SPH's Department of Biostatistics the Richard G. Cornell Distinguished University Professor of Public Health. Distinguished University Professor (DUP) is the highest professorial title granted at UM. There are currently only 43 DUPs on campus. DUPs are recognized for their excellence across all three dimensions of scholarship, teaching, and service to their schools, the University, their professional communities, and society more generally.
UM Provost Theresa Sullivan has named David Mendez, associate professor of Health Management and Policy, chair of a Special Committee on Institutional Innovation in Collaborative Technologies for Learning. Mendez and the 15-member committee will examine options for sustained support of innovation in this arena and will report to the provost in December 2008.
Spring 2008
 The 2007-2008 student recruitment video for UM SPH has received several national awards, including 2 Telly Awards and an Aegis Award. Titled "Public Health and the Michigan Difference," the 7-minute film was narrated by CNN's Sanjay Gupta, directed by Alec Friedman, and produced by the UM SPH Office of Communications in cooperation with the Office of Academic Affairs. In addition, the 2007 "Global Health Partnerships" video was a finalist for an Aegis Award. It was produced by the UM SPH Office of Communications in cooperation with the Center for Global Health.
 MaryFran Sowers received a 2008 University of Iowa Distinguished Alumni Award, in recognition of how her studies have deepened understanding of the physiological changes of the aging female body, including the genetic and nutritional factors of bone loss and other diseases. Director of UM's Center for Integrated Approaches to Complex Diseases, Sowers' UM titles include John G. Searle Professor of Public Health, professor of Epidemiology, adjunct professor in Internal Medicine and OB/Gynecology . She is the principal investigator for 6 National Institutes of Health grants that generate more than $11 million for her research.
Amy Brooks, Dawn Reed, and Everett Roberts were recognized for special awards at UM SPH's annual Recognizing Excellence in Staff Service program reception on April 30, 2008. Employees celebrating 10- and 20-year anniversaries as of December 2007 were also honored. Details.
 The University of Michigan Risk Science Center (UMRSC) has announced winners of its first fellowship competition, which provides summer stipend support for students from UM SPH to enhance education and training in the environmental risk sciences and prepare public health students for careers in the field of risk analysis. Pictured are this year's awardees: Jaclyn Gaydos (left) and Rosaicela Román Gómez, both Ph.D. students in Environmental Health Sciences. Details in the March 08 newsletter available from the Risk Center.
SPH student Kristin King has been awarded an NIH/Fogarty Ellison International Clinical Research Fellowship. She will spend a year in Lusaka, Zambia, starting in August 2008, participating in clinical research related to cervical cancer and HIV/AIDS, as well as assisting in expanding the reach of the cervical cancer screening program in Zambia.
 A photo from the spring break 2008 UM SPH Office of Public Health Practice PHAST trip to China was chosen as the Photo of the Month for April by the Association of Schools of Public Health in its weekly Friday Letter. The photo, which depicts a busy rush hour in the city of Tianjin, was taken by UM SPH communications specialist Mary Beth Lewis.
Winter 2008
 Betsy Foxman, UM SPH professor of Epidemiology, is being inducted into the University of California-Los Angeles School of Public Health Alumni Hall of Fame, which "celebrates the accomplishments of outstanding alumni who make substantial and distinctive contributions to the field of public health." Dr. Foxman received her M.S.P.H. degree in 1980 and her Ph.D. degree in 1983 from the Department of Epidemiology at UCLA. At UM SPH, Dr. Foxman directs the Center for Molecular and Clinical Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases.
 James H. Vincent, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, will receive the Donald E. Cummings Memorial Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association at the annual Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition in Minneapolis in June. This award was established in 1943 as a tribute to Donald E. Cummings, AIHA's third president. It is given for outstanding contributions to the knowledge and practice of the profession of industrial hygiene. At the conference, Dr. Vincent will present the Cummings Memorial Lecture, titled "Graduate Education in Occupational Hygiene: Past, Present and Future."
 Niladri Basu is among 10 Environmental Health Science Communication Fellows recently chosen by the non-profit Environmental Health Sciences (EHS) organization. The fellows will work with writing staff at EHS, publisher of Environmental Health News and the Daily Climate, Environmental Health News and the Daily Climate, to produce original reviews and commentary on the broader implications of significant research. Each fellow will receive a $5,000 stipend for the year-long appointment. Basu is an environmental toxicologist in the University of Michigan School of Public Health Department of Environmental Health Sciences who studies how chemical pollutants affect brain and nerve function in wildlife and humans.
At the 13th Annual Toxicology Symposium held on February 7, 2008, at UM SPH, the following awards were presented at the poster session:
- 3. Eric Horstick: Electrogenic Response of Skeletal Muscle in the mi34 Zebrafish Behavioral Mutant
- 2. Mark Miller: Variation, Levels and Congener Profiles of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) from Human Gestational Membranes
- 1. John Phipps: Cigarette Smoke Exposure Impairs Alveolar Macrophage Function and Pulmonary Immunity in a Murine Model of Pneumococcal Pneumonia
 UM SPH's Edith Parker is among the six University of Michigan professors named as fellows in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation's (CIC) Academic Leadership Program for the 2007-08 academic year. The UM Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President selected these representatives, nominated by their deans, to join counterparts at 12 major universities for seminars on leadership and human resources, long-range
planning and budgeting, and motivating change at public research
universities.
 Allison Rosen, an M.D. and researcher with both SPH and the UM Health System, has been selected to receive the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation’s McDevitt Excellence in Research Award for her work as a clinical researcher. Rosen and Andrew J. Haig, M.D., associate professor in the UM Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the U-M Medical School, were two of only four researchers in the state to be honored with this achievement. Rosen was honored for her work investigating the cost, value and benefits of medical care in the policy forum. In recent research efforts, she has found that if some medicines are offered for free to certain high-risk patients, money could be saved in the long run by preventing costly problems later. More info.
UM SPH epidemiology (international health) alum Edward Kadunc, MPH '74, has been named to lead the Pan American Health and Education Foundation. An international development expert for 30 years, Kadunc comes to the foundation most recently having served as the mission director in Mexico for the U.S. Agency for International Development. More info.
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