What does it take to step into something when there isn’t a roadmap?
Dr. Alexis Travis has done that more than once.
At 28, in her first directorship, she was asking hospital leaders across Massachusetts to change maternity-care practices.
Years later, she became the first person of color to lead Michigan’s aging network.
And today, she’s building a model for health and well-being at Michigan State University that didn’t exist before she arrived.
But Dr. Travis isn’t only interested in what it takes to go first.
She’s also asking what it would look like for public health to get there first.
What if, instead of responding after something has already affected our health, public health was there at the beginning?
