Michele Kiely Appointed New Associate Dean for Research

“Dr. Kiely brings tremendous expertise to this position and enhances the potential of the school for success in competitive research funding and organization,” said Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes, Dean of the CUNY School of Public Health.

Dr. Keily is an established researcher in the field of health disparities, with a special interest in reduction of infant mortality and of intimate partner violence. Her experience reflects a broad range of pediatric and obstetric health issues—including disabilities in children, health care access and utilization in mothers and children; and investigations of a randomized controlled trial to improve risk factors, thus improving pregnancy outcomes among high-risk minority women.

Dr. Kiely joined the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 2002, when she was chosen to run the NIH-DC Initiative to Reduce Infant Mortality in Minority Populations, conducting community-based interventions with pregnant women and new mothers in underserved communities. One of the publications from the NIH-DC Initiative selected by the US Preventive Services Task Force was the only study they cited about interventions for intimate partner violence during pregnancy.

Dr. Kiely has more than 50 publications in the peer-reviewed literature, including published works on infant mortality in African-Americans, preterm births, and the environmental effects of tobacco smoke on pregnancy outcomes, birth defects and developmental disabilities and multiple births.

From 2005 to 2008, she was a Senior Visiting Scientist in the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States. All activities relating to children were her responsibility, including the Surgeon General’s Year of the Healthy Child, serving as liaison to the Department of Justice’s initiative on health care for incarcerated youth and as the subject matter expert for the Surgeon General’s congressional testimonies on child health. She organized the congressionally mandated Surgeon General’s conference on the Prevention of Preterm Birth. For the development and organization of the conference she was awarded a Surgeon General’s Outstanding Service Award.

From 1999 to 2002, Dr. Kiely was an Associate Professor of General and Community Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was also an Associate Professor of Environmental Health at University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, Executive Director of the Center for the Promotion of Life Long Health and Director of the Cincinnati Pediatric Research Group, a practice based research network. As Director of the Center for the Promotion of Lifelong Health, she created a research program that addressed health issues during childhood that impact on adult health. The Center also promoted advocacy and fostered policy that encouraged lifelong health, with a strong focus on disadvantaged children. The areas addressed by the Center included prevention of child abuse, school health, safety and oral health. As Director she received a $750,000 grant from a local foundation to design and carry out an evaluation of eight school-based health centers in Ohio and Kentucky.

The Center also belonged to Cincinnati SafeKids, a coalition created to promote safety and decrease unintentional injuries. In its first year, the Center received an award from Cincinnati SafeKids for outstanding service. In the area of oral health, she forged ties with the Cincinnati Department of Health to explore ways to increase dental services to children in Cincinnati and served on the Board of Trustees of the Oral Health Council of Greater Cincinnati. She also acted as a liaison with Every Child Succeeds, a home-visiting program to prevent child abuse and neglect.

As Director of The Cincinnati Pediatric Research Group (CPRG), she oversaw studies done within the network, was the liaison with the Director of the Clinical Trials Division, with the Director of Pediatric Informatics and with each of the practices in the network. The CPRG was one of only a few pediatric networks to be funded by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for their Practice Based Research Networks. The network pursued projects with applications to clinical practice and completed studies in the areas of attention deficit, otitis media, obesity, and domestic violence.

From 1990 to 1999, Dr. Kiely was the Chief Epidemiologist at the Maternal and Child Health Bureau/Health Resources and Services Administration. In that capacity she was responsible for a broad range of data activities: the priority area contact for Healthy People 2000 for Maternal and Infant Health, fetal and infant death reviews, and several distinct projects whose goal was to improve analytic capacity of persons working in State maternal and child health programs. She was responsible for the production of Child Health, USA, a congressionally mandated data book produced for the lay public. She was the lead person responsible for the compilation of data for the Bureau’s annual report to Congress.

During her last four years at the Maternal and Child Health Bureau she worked on the issue of early discharge of mothers and newborns from the hospital; moving the science forward, building consensus within the Department of Health and Human Services. Her work on the topic provided information to Congress that led to the passage of the Newborns’ and Mothers’ Health Protection Act, which guarantees insurance companies will pay for two days in the hospital for mothers and their newborns.