Jennifer Johnson, PhD
- Chair, Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health
- Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health
- Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Bio
Dr. Jennifer Johnson is a C.S. Mott Endowed Professor of Public Health, professor of OB-GYN, and professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. After spending more than a decade as faculty at Brown University, she came to MSU in 2015 to begin the Division (now Department) of Public Health in Flint in partnership with the Flint community. Dr. Johnson was drawn to Flint because MSU had taken an unprecedented community-participatory approach to building the Division of Public Health, building the entire academic infrastructure (including focus areas, priorities, faculty to hire) in partnership with the Flint community. She was struck by the innovation of this idea and could see the potential impact of an exceptional and radically community-partnered enterprise. The result, one of the only academic units in the country developed fully in partnership with those it seeks to serve, has been successful in terms of federal research dollars and sustained community change, providing proof of concept and support for the power of participatory processes. Living and working in Flint, she has valued and fostered her relationships with Flint community members for the past 10 years.
Dr. Johnson’s education began at Brigham Young University as an undergraduate in Applied Physics. She remained at Brigham Young and went on to earn her PhD in Clinical Psychology. She then completed her psychology residency at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, and later moved to the Brown University Department of Psychiatry, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship, joined the faculty, and remains appointed as adjunct faculty.
A licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Johnson is a leading national researcher in mental health and maternal health treatments and implementation science. She serves as chief translation officer for the MSU Office of Health Sciences, helping to guide the realization of the university’s sustainable health strategic goals and to ensure uptake of research findings into practice and policy. Dr. Johnson has been a principal investigator of 18 NIH-funded research studies worth more than $72 million, including her current two NIH Center grants [the Maternal Health Multilevel Intervention/s for Racial Equity (MIRACLE) Center at $18.9M and the National Center for Health and Justice Integration for Suicide Prevention (NCHATS) at $15.4]. She is credited with the first large grant award received through the Henry Ford Health partnership, and in FY 2022, she was the highest NIH-funded researcher in any OB-GYN department in the country.
Dr. Johnson’s leadership at MSU includes serving on the MSU Strategic Planning Committee and serving as the chair of the Faculty Senate while also leading in her field through roles on national scientific boards, numerous NIH review committees, and prestigious editorial boards. She is committed to participatory research, leadership, and governance processes to promote equity, expand impact, empower the traditionally unempowered, and elevate their perspectives and contributions to solutions. Dr. Johnson is a proud mentor to 13 faculty and postdoctoral mentees, many of whom come from under-represented minority backgrounds