Barbara Israel, DrPH, MPH

Barbara A. Israel, DrPH, MPH is a Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She is the Director and a founding member of the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (Detroit URC), a community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership now in its 25th year. She has extensive experience conducting, evaluating, disseminating and translating findings from CBPR projects in collaboration with partners in diverse communities, and teaches a graduate level course in CBPR. She has published widely in the areas of: the conduct of CBPR; the evaluation of CBPR partnerships; the social and physical environmental determinants of health and health inequities; the relationship among stress, social support, control and physical and mental health; and evaluation research methodologies.

The Detroit URC has facilitated the establishment of numerous CBPR partnerships affiliated with the Center, which are engaged in multiple NIH and Foundation-funded basic etiologic research, intervention research and training projects aimed at increasing knowledge and addressing factors associated with health inequities. Dr. Israel is actively involved in several of these CBPR partnerships and projects examining, for example, the environmental triggers of childhood asthma and strategies for reducing them, social and physical environmental determinants of cardiovascular disease, impact of physical activity interventions on heart health, impact of air quality on health, translation of research findings into policy change, and capacity building for conducting CBPR and policy advocacy.