Amy Schulz, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S.W.
(She/her/hers)
Biography
Amy J. Schulz is University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor, and Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health (UMSPH). She has served as PI or Co-Investigator on multiple NIH-funded initiatives. A sociologist with expertise in the joint contributions of social and physical environmental exposures to health inequities, and a leading scholar in the field of community based participatory research (CBPR), she has extensive expertise in working collaboratively with community, practice and academic partners to conduct both etiologic and intervention research. She currently serves as MultiPI for the Community Action to Promote Healthy Environments (CAPHE) partnership, a CBPR partnership focused on air pollution, social and economic vulnerabilities, and development and implementation of a Public Health Action Plan to reduce excess risk in the Detroit Metropolitan area. Since 2000 she has served as PI for the Healthy Environments Partnership (HEP), a CBPR partnership focused on understanding and designing, implementing and evaluating interventions to address social determinants of cardiovascular disease in Detroit. She has also been a member of the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (Detroit URC) since its inception in 1995. Her specific expertise is in analysis of joint effects of social and physical environmental conditions for chronic health outcomes (Schulz et al 2016; Schulz et al 2018; Schulz et al 2020), the development of policy and programmatic interventions, and engagement of community, academic and public health practice partners in participatory research and intervention efforts (e.g., Schulz et al 2017). She have worked closely with community and academic collaborators to develop widely cited conceptual frameworks (Schulz et al 2005), conduct etiologic research examining pathways linking social and physical environments to multiple health outcomes, and develop, implement and evaluate community-based interventions to promote health and health equity. Dr. Schulz teaches master's and doctoral level courses focused on environmental health promotion and equity, community level change, and survey research. Dr. Schulz's research appears in the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Health and Place, Social Problems, Health Education and Behavior, The Annual Review of Public Health, The Journal of Urban Health and Health Education Research, among others.
- Ph.D., University of Michigan
- M.P.H., University of Michigan
- M.S.W., University of Michigan
Research
Dr. Schulz's research interests include examining race-based residential segregation and other manifestations of racism as these shape social and physical environmental exposures and access to resources necessary to maintain health. Her research on neighborhood environments and their implications for physical activity, dietary practices and cardiovascular risk has examined both observed and perceived environments and their joint implications for health. More recent work has examined associations between race-based residential segregation, cumulative risk, including the geo-spatial concentration of social, economic and physical environmental risk factors, and their implications for racial disparities in health outcomes. She contributes regularly to the literature on community-based participatory research, including the use of formative evaluation within the context of community-based participatory research partnerships to examine partnership dynamics, equitable processes and equity as an outcome of partnership efforts.
