College of Health Solutions kicks off 2025 with visiting faculty from Northwestern University

The College of Health Solutions opened its doors to a new set of visiting faculty members to kick off 2025.

“Every year the College of Health Solutions hosts several visiting scholars from universities all over the country and the world. These scholars come to work closely with our faculty, thinking about new research collaborations and thinking about opportunities to develop new lectures for our students and their students,” said Interim Dean Michael Yudell.

“This month we have two amazing professors from Northwestern University in Chicago who have fled the icy cold to join us here in the beautiful 60-degree sunny weather of Arizona. They are meeting with our students and our faculty and giving talks on campus in different departments and programs. We are especially grateful to have this opportunity to engage with them.”

Northwestern University faculty members Greg Miller and Edith Chen joined Health Solutions faculty members to forge new connections and learn about the research being conducted.

“ASU's got so much exciting stuff going on. It's a huge, huge institution that's very connected with the community around Phoenix and the southwestern United States. So it presents an opportunity to think about our work in a different context than Chicago,” Miller said.

According to Chen, their visit to ASU was an opportunity to network and learn from industry peers.

“We see it as an opportunity to spend part of our sabbatical year going to a new university, getting to meet new people and talk about potential overlapping research interests and maybe develop some potential new research collaborations, learn about some exciting new research that's going on here,” Chen explained.

Their research together investigates the impact of socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood on long-term health. Their findings have been presented at two Industry Talks held for faculty and staff, generating conversations between the visiting scholars and resident faculty.

“ASU's rapidly coming onto the scene as kind of a major player in not only public health but in primary care and in medicine. There are some real exciting opportunities to get in on the ground floor of that here,” said Miller.

Until now, Miller and Chen have focused on conducting studies in the Chicago area. With the resources and different context available at the College of Health Solutions and the Phoenix area at large, they foresee the opportunity to apply their findings to a different ecosystem.

“It's interesting and important to think about what we might find in Chicago, about either the underlying causes of health inequities or the promising solutions and how well that translates to the context in Phoenix and in the southwestern United States more broadly. We don't know the answer to that. There's probably no better place than Arizona State to be able to ask those questions,” Miller stated.