April 18, 2022

Family Medicine’s Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin receives prestigious Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award

Cancer researcher will travel to Israel to study HPV vaccine hesitancy in vulnerable populations

Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin, Ph.D., research professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan, has been awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award – the most prestigious appointment in the Fulbright Scholar Program.

Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin PhD
Professor Sherri Sheinfeld Gorin, Ph.D.

Sheinfeld Gorin will spend four months in Israel in the coming 2022- 2023 academic year, investigating strategies to reduce HPV hesitancy. Her research project is focused on the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines, at multiple levels (in policy, the community, healthcare organizations and providers/provider teams, caregivers and parents, and in young people).

The research initiative will be implemented in close collaboration with colleagues at Hebrew University-Hadassah’s Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine in Jerusalem. Findings will be disseminated through guest lectures in-country and in forthcoming publications.

“I’m thrilled about the award,” Sheinfeld Gorin said. “Israel is quite unique in its history and culture. It’s been a world leader in health care and biomedical research.”

She added that as a diverse, multi-cultural country, with considerable variations in income and levels of education among its populace, it offers opportunities to conduct research through a health equity lens.

The Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine is foremost among schools of public health, with a robust International Master’s Program in Public Health. Sheinfeld Gorin plans to offer a course in this path-breaking program.

The Braun School’s focus on research and social action, which increase social justice, equity and health across vulnerable populations, is highly consonant with her own career focus.

The Fulbright-funded initiative builds on relationships that Sheinfeld Gorin has developed with collaborators among Braun School faculty who lead the National Program for Quality Indicators in Community Healthcare (QICH) within Israel’s Ministry of Health. One of the goals of the QICH program is to ensure efficacy and equality in health care. The program provides equal quality of care regardless of sex, age, or socioeconomic position, according to a recent article published in the Annals of Family Medicine, for which Sheinfeld Gorin serves as an associate editor.

Sheinfeld Gorin also expects to continue to collaborate with other Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine faculty who head key divisions within the Israeli Ministry of Health. These colleagues can facilitate her IRB-approved access to the national immunization registry, health plans, HMOs, healthcare providers and potential patient participants for her study.

Sheinfeld Gorin is a globally-recognized research expert on cancer prevention, screening and treatment interventions in racially and ethnically diverse communities. Much of her published research focuses on bio-medical interventions for cervical, colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers. She also studies cancer care coordination processes and outcomes.

A full list of her top publications can be found on her Family Medicine Department bio.

Sheinfeld Gorin joins other researchers in U-M’s Department of Family Medicine who have received Fulbright scholarships, including the late Michael D. Fetters, M.D., MPH, MA, professor and former director of the Mixed Methods Program at U-M, who served as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair of Social Sciences at U-M’s Global Health partner Peking University Health Sciences Center from September 2016 to January 2017; Research Professor Zora Djuric, Ph.D., who was a 2018 Fulbright Global Scholar; and Professor Emeritus Sara Warber, M.D., who received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2014 to study integrative medicine therapies and environmental values at the University of Exeter in Cornwall, United Kingdom.

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