Mmeje receives Passion for Public Health award

Okeoma Mmeje, M.D., recently received the Passion for Public Health award from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Mmeje, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Michigan Medicine and a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, was recognized for her commitment to connecting her work to public health and positive impact on the health care system.

Mmeje was recruited to U-M as part of the Presidential Admission Scholar program focused on Global HIV/AIDS in 2013. Her research focuses on national and international reproductive health, expedited partner therapy (prevention of sexually transmitted infections) as a treatment strategy for at-risk populations, safer conception in HIV-serodiscordant couples, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and reproductive infectious diseases.

In her nomination letter, Mmeje was touted for her work assuring that EPT is used in areas and populations where it is most needed and securing funding to evaluate the use of EPT for treatment of chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomonas infection in school-based health centers in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Flint.

For the last two years, she has been working with the Centers for Disease Control as part of a program to use expertise from across the country to strengthen CDCs ability to support the U.S. health care system.