Maren Miriam Spolum
Maren Spolum brings to her PPA internship many years of research experience and leadership, including coordinating a 5-year National Cancer Institute R25 research grant training health providers on interdisciplinary end-of-life cancer care, as well as working as a research assistant addressing health inequities for the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center, and conducting health impact assessments for Health in Partnership (formerly Human Impact Partners).
Most recently, Ms. Spolum was the lab manager and project director of a USDA-funded six-year research study of food access and food security across the state of Michigan. The project was housed within the Multicultural Environmental Leadership Development Initiative (MELDI) lab at the University of Michigan School for Environment & Sustainability, and included project teams from MSU, GVSU. UM-Flint, LSSU and UW-Madison.
Broadly Ms. Spolum is interested in how changes in U.S political economy impact population health. Her dissertation research traces the historical and political conditions giving rise to neoliberalism within the U.S., and the role and impact that political philosophy, its incorporation into US political economy and subsequent policies have had in the social patterning of health inequities across the country.
Education
Ms. Spolum is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Equity at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, as well as a demography trainee in the Population Studies Center within UM’s Institute for Social Research. She earned both a Master of Public Policy and Master of Public Health from the University of Michigan. She received her BA in History, Philosophy and the Social Studies of Science and Medicine from the University of Chicago.
