Lawrence Reid photo

Faces of Michigan

Name: Lawrence Reid
Year: Graduate student
Major: Epidemiology
Home: Ohio

Lawrence Reid, working for a Master’s Degree in epidemiology at U-M’s School of Public Health (2007), was interested in science as early as middle school, when he participated in an after-school science club in his hometown of Pickerington, Ohio. But he was also a talented athlete: a three-year letterman and starter for the Pickerington High School varsity football team and a four-year letterman in track and field.

Reid brought both his interest and science and his athletic ability to U-M in 2001. He had a stellar football career as a three-year letterman and two-year starter, winning the Roger Zatkoff Award in 2003 as U-M’s top linebacker and gaining national attention as an inside linebacker for the Wolverines.

As a student, Reid majored in sociology and minored in African American studies in U-M’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts. While serving an internship at Howard University Law School, Reid attended a National Institutes of Health drug policy conference, where he heard a presentation on epidemiological research that focused on health outcome disparities among minority populations. As a graduate student, his research focuses on the disparities among racial groups in health outcomes, especially in the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among African American youth.

His concern about racial disparities in health outcomes led Reid to co-chair the 21st Minority Health Conference put on by Public Health Students of African Descent (PHSAD). “Working with the faculty, students and administrative staff of SPH was a great and enlightening experience. With them, I collaborated on an exciting project dealing with natural disasters and disease from a social perspective, expanded my knowledge of social and infectious disease epidemiology, and contributed to the ongoing legacy of PHSAD's annual Minority Health Conference, which provides pertinent minority health information to the community and public health professionals,” said Reid.