CLEVELAND - Amy R. Sheon, PhD, MPH, has accepted the position of executive director of the Urban Health Initiative at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Amy, who is currently senior policy analyst at Altarum Institute in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will join Case Western Reserve University on June 1. In her new position, Amy will provide the strategic leadership for a comprehensive Urban Health Initiative – a long-term commitment from the university to enhance the health of, and access to quality care for members of the Northeast Ohio community. The Initiative will include health education, population-based health services, and community-based research. As executive director, she will be responsible for bringing our current urban health programs and the School of Medicine’s forthcoming urban health pipeline program under the aegis of a single institutional home. She will help ensure a smooth transition for the academic and research programs involved and will encourage synergy among them. Her background and experience exhibit exceptional acumen in this type of public health administration. “I am eager to work with Amy to shape the Urban Health Initiative in the coming years,” said School of Medicine Dean, Pamela B. Davis, MD, PhD. “She is an outstanding fit for the Initiative and the School.” Amy has more than 25 years of deep and varied experience working in public health issues such as family planning, HIV research, ethical issues in genetics, and childhood obesity. She has accrued this experience in many sectors: not-for-profit, academic, private and government. At Altarum Institute, Amy was co-project director for the Childhood Obesity Prevention Mission Project where she worked with Healthy Kids, Healthy Michigan to develop a statewide system of body mass index surveillance. She also participated in Health Care Lorain County, a project to improve the system of care for uninsured residents. Prior to joining Altarum Institute in 2006, Amy was instrumental in creating three collaborative programs at the University of Michigan: a social science think tank working on early childhood education, a program on the ethical implications of life sciences, and a clinical research center. Amy has also worked at Westat, a consulting firm in Rockville, M.D., and spent eight years at the NIH studying the social and ethical aspects of HIV prevention and cancer genetics research. Amy earned her BA in sociology from Cornell University, her MPH from the University of Michigan, and her PhD in public health policy from The Johns Hopkins University. “Having been born at the Cleveland Clinic and grown up in Toledo, I am especially pleased to have an opportunity to improve the health of people living in Northeast Ohio and to work with the fabulous faculty at Case Western Reserve University,” Sheon notes. She lives in Oberlin with her husband, Marvin Krislov, and children Zachary, Jesse and Eve.
Founded in 1843, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is the largest medical research institution in Ohio and is among the nation's top medical schools for research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The School of Medicine is recognized throughout the international medical community for outstanding achievements in teaching. The School's innovative and pioneering Western Reserve2 curriculum interweaves four themes--research and scholarship, clinical mastery, leadership, and civic professionalism--to prepare students for the practice of evidence-based medicine in the rapidly changing health care environment of the 21st century. Nine Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the School of Medicine.
Annually, the School of Medicine trains more than 800 MD and MD/PhD students and ranks in the top 25 among U.S. research-oriented medical schools as designated by U.S. News & World Report's "Guide to Graduate Education."
The School of Medicine is affiliated with University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, MetroHealth Medical Center, the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the Cleveland Clinic, with which it established the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University in 2002. case.edu/medicine.