2025 Recipient 

Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health, College of Human Medicine 

The College of Human Medicine Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public
Health is the first academic department to be co-developed and co-governed
in partnership with those it is designed to serve, the Flint community. The idea
to create a medical school department based in Flint, much of the funding to
develop it, and departmental priorities came from the Flint community.

In 2011, the Flint community (including area hospitals and the Mott Foundation)
approached MSU, proposing the creation of an academic Division of Public Health
in Flint. MSU agreed. With a 2012 grant from the Mott Foundation, MSU took
an unprecedented community-participatory approach, co-designing the new
division’s entire infrastructure (including focus areas, priorities, faculty to hire) with
the Flint community. Elected community members serve on decision-making
committees as partners in faculty hiring and departmental governance.

This innovative model has achieved remarkable success, securing nearly $200
million in external funding to address community-identified priorities, including
health equity, maternal child health, mental health and substance use, chronic
disease, healthy behaviors, and social determinants of health. In 2022, further
support from the Mott Foundation enabled the creation of the Charles Stewart
Mott Department of Public Health as MSU’s first fully philanthropically named
department.