Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed (born October 31, 1984), known as Abdul El-Sayed, is a candidate for governor of Michigan, running as a Democrat. El-Sayed served as Executive Director of the Detroit Health Department and Health Officer for the City of Detroit from 2015 to 2017. Appointed at age 30, he was the youngest health commissioner in a major US City. Previously, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University. He is an internationally recognized public health expert, and the author of over 100 scholarly articles, abstracts, and book chapters on public health policy, social epidemiology, and health disparities. His essays on public health policy have also been published in The New York Times, CNN, The Hill, The Huffington Post, The Detroit News, and the Detroit Free Press. On February 9, 2017, the Detroit News reported that El-Sayed would resign as health director to run for governor of Michigan in the 2018 Democratic Party primary.
Video Abdul El-Sayed
Early life
El-Sayed was born in the Detroit metropolitan area to parents who emigrated to the United States from Egypt.
He grew up in the Detroit area with his father, Mohamed El-Sayed, and stepmother, Jacqueline El-Sayed, a native of Gratiot County, Michigan. Both are engineers. His father grew up in Alexandria, Egypt and emigrated to the United States to study engineering at Wayne State University. His mother, Fatten Elkomy, is a nurse practitioner in Missouri.
El-Sayed graduated in 2003 from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, where he was a three-sport athlete - football, wrestling, and lacrosse - becoming a captain in each team sport in which he participated.
Maps Abdul El-Sayed
Education
El-Sayed attended the University of Michigan, where he majored in biology and political science, and played on the men's club lacrosse team. He won the William Jennings Bryan Prize for Political Science, graduated with Highest Distinction, and delivered the student commencement speech in 2007 in front of president Bill Clinton. While at the University of Michigan, El-Sayed lived with his grandparents, Jan and Judy Johnson, at their house in Whitmore Lake, Washtenaw County, Michigan.
El-Sayed was awarded a full-tuition Dean's scholarship to attend the University of Michigan Medical School, where he completed his first two years of medical school. There, he led a student medical mission to Peru and founded a student organization that raised money and coordinated community service for a local free clinic. He was offered the Marshall Scholarship and awarded the Rhodes Scholarship in 2009 as a second-year medical student. He attended Oriel College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health in 2011. While at Oxford, he earned a full blue as captain of Oxford's men's lacrosse team. He completed his MD at Columbia University's College of Physicians & Surgeons in 2014 on a Soros Fellowship for New Americans and Medical Scientist Training Program fellow funded through the National Institutes of Health.
Health career
Public Health Professor
In 2014, he joined the faculty at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health as Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology. He served as director of Columbia's Systems Science Program and Global Research Analytics for Population Health. As a researcher, he has authored over 100 scientific publications, including articles, commentaries, book chapters, and abstracts, about health disparities, birth outcomes, and obesity. His research has been cited over 700 times. He is the recipient of several research awards, including being named one of the Carnegie Council's Policy Innovators. He created and taught the Mailman School's first ever course on systems science and population health. He co-edited a textbook on the topic with Sandro Galea published in 2017 by Oxford University Press, "Systems Science and Population Health".
Health Director of Detroit
In August, 2015, Mayor Mike Duggan appointed El-Sayed Health Officer and Executive Director of the Detroit Health Department, making him, at 30 years old, the youngest health officer in a major US city at the time. In that role, he was charged with rebuilding the Detroit Health Department after government public health activities were provided by a nonprofit before the City of Detroit's municipal bankruptcy in 2013.[8] On his first day on the job, El-Sayed arrived to a small office space in the back of Detroit's parking department overseeing five employees.[11] In his first year as Director, El-Sayed led efforts to oppose increases in sulfur dioxide emissions by Marathon Petroleum's Southwest Refinery, which resulted in reductions in overall emissions.[7] He also led efforts to test Detroit schools for lead in the wake of Flint's Water crisis,[24] provide free glasses to children in Detroit city schools,[23] and transform the City's troubled Animal Control department.[25][26]
In view of his leadership on lead poisoning reduction, he was appointed to the governor's statewide Childhood Lead Elimination Board. He also serves on the State of Michigan's Public health Advisory Commission, and the Advisory Committee to the US Secretary of Health & Human Services for Healthy People 2030.
He was named one of Crain's Detroit's "40 under 40", and "Public Official of the Year" in 2016 by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. In 2017, the University of Michigan awarded him a Bicentennial Alumni Award, awarded to 20 alumni "whose achievements carry on Michigan's traditions of intellectual creativity and academic endeavor, of civic engagement, and of national and international service."
Political ambitions
Gubernatorial candidacy
On February 9, 2017, the Detroit News reported that El-Sayed would resign as health director to run for governor of Michigan in the 2018 Democratic Party primary. He officially announced his candidacy for Michigan governor on February 25, 2017. El-Sayed was inspired to run for governor following the Flint water crisis, saying, "I watched as Governor Snyder and his team of accountants were cutting costs and cutting corners. Their inattention to communities ultimately poisoned thousands of children - and those children were the very ones that I was serving at the helm of the health department. ... And that's something I didn't believe in. I believe in government as something we do in this country for the people and by the people".
El-Sayed pledged not to accept any campaign donations from corporations, and has raised over $2,000,000 from individual donations.
El-Sayed has received support from many notable public figures, including Reza Aslan, Congressman Ro Khanna, Democratic congressional nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Women's March Organizer Linda Sarsour, civil rights activist Shaun King, economic justice activist Ady Barkan, and actress Piper Perabo. He is also endorsed by the organizations The People for Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution, and Democracy for America.
Personal
El-Sayed lives in Detroit, Michigan with his wife, Sarah Jukaku, a psychiatrist. El-Sayed had a sandwich named after him ("the Abdul") at Ricardo's, a sandwich shop in Oxford's Covered market, while a student at Oxford University.
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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