On the Heights: November 2025
November highlights include a National Academies leadership role, new research on AI adoption in healthcare and youth mental health reporting systems, faculty testimony on medical debt relief, and a new podcast series.
Melissa Creary
Michigan Public Health researchers launch collaborative to transform public health practice and training
A Michigan Public Health team launches a collaborative to help public health institutions, universities, and communities transform training, research, and practice to address health disparities and advance equity.
Melissa Creary featured on Detroit PBS Show American Black Journal
Melissa Creary, assistant professor of Health Management and Policy, recently appeared on the television show American Black Journal to discuss sick cell disease. The US Food and Drug Administration recently approved several new gene therapies for the disease.
Sickle cell raises COVID-19 risk, but vaccination lags
Adults with sickle cell disease around half as likely to have gotten initial doses as people without sickle cell disease, according to new research from University of Michigan researchers.
Gene-editing treatments for sickle cell disease may be out of reach for many
Q&A with Melissa Creary
Federal approval of a breakthrough gene-editing technology that treats the pain and debilitating effects of sickle cell disease is cause for celebration among a community with few options for relief, but it also comes with concerns that too few people can afford to pay for the therapy.
Structural Racism Is Not an Exemption from Accountability
In February 2021, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) tweeted, “No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?” The tweet was designed to promote a podcast that was ostensibly focused on structural racism yet did not include experts on the topic. The subsequent uproar highlighted the harm caused by deep intentional ignorance of the term structural racism, defined in the American Journal of Public Health as “policies and practices…that confer advantages on people considered White and ideologies that maintain these advantages, while simultaneously oppressing other racialized groups.”