Meet Dawn Misra

“I expected something like this would happen in my lifetime,” although perhaps not quite so soon, she said. “I’d say MSU leadership was out front on a lot of this with their quick actions protecting and supporting students, staff and faculty.”

The arrival of COVID-19 changed her plans for the department she now heads, accelerating some, delaying others. Developing a strategic plan for the department will move forward more quickly, but recruitment of new faculty members will likely be delayed.

“How can you move someone in the middle of a pandemic?” Misra asked.

She and other faculty members scrambled to lend their expertise in the fight against the virus, volunteering to help staff the state’s hotline, answering calls from physicians and nurses asking permission to test patients for the coronavirus.

Assistant Prof. Lixin Zhang, PhD, is working to design a course on coronavirus to offer this summer with an advanced seminar for graduate students in spring 2020. The department’s research likely will turn toward the virus, not only on its short-term implications, but on the possible long-term health effects.

“I have a lot of interest in what we call life-course epidemiology,” Misra said. That is the study of how exposure before birth and in early childhood can negatively affect health later in life.

Immediately before joining MSU, Misra was a Wayne State University professor, director of its Division of Health Equity and associate chair for research in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health Sciences. She previously was an assistant professor of maternal and child health at Johns Hopkins University and an associate professor and director of the Reproductive and Women’s Health Interdepartmental Concentration at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Misra received her PhD in epidemiology from Columbia University.

Much of her research is on adverse birth outcomes among African-American families, including infant mortality.

“I think it’s really important that people understand about health disparities,” she said.

Those long-standing disparities have become more apparent as a disproportionate number of patients dying of COVID-19 are African-Americans.

“There is nothing inherently wrong with black people,” Misra said. “The racial disparities in COVID-19 have everything to do with societal conditions,” including racism, lack of access to health care and untreated chronic diseases.

 “I have a really strong commitment to health equity,” Misra said.

She expects an increasing number of students will be interested in epidemiology and health disparities as a result of COVID-19, and she hopes to recruit more minority students to the discipline.

“If we really want to solve this problem, we have to do a better job with our pipeline and recruit more minorities,” Misra said. “We need to hear what the community thinks is important to address. Having more epidemiologists of color will be a step in that direction.”