Kathleen Ford, PhD

Kathleen Ford, Ph.D., research scientist in the Department of Epidemiology in the School of Public Health, retired from active faculty status on August 24, 2009. 

Dr. Ford received her B.A. degree from Boston College in 1971, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Brown University in 1973 and 1975, respectively. From 1978-85, she was an assistant professor at The Johns Hopkins University. She joined the University of Michigan faculty as an associate research scientist in 1985 and was promoted to research scientist in 1993. 

Dr. Ford has conducted a number of studies with NIH funding and served on numerous AIDS-related NIH study sections. Many of her studies focused on prevention of HIV infection within the U.S. population as a whole and in the African American and Latino communities in Detroit. Over a ten-year period, she conducted a series of behavioral and intervention studies of groups at high risk for HIV infection in Indonesia. She also did research on the impact of the AIDS epidemic on children in Africa and developed a methodologically-oriented course on AIDS research for epidemiology graduate students. Recently, she was a visiting professor at Mahidol University in Thailand, where she taught an international group of Ph.D. students and conducted research related to the HIV risk of migrant workers, aging and sexuality, and internal migration and household welfare. From 2005-09, Dr. Ford was a visiting professor at the Institute for Population and Social Research in Bangkok, Thailand. 

The Regents now salute this distinguished faculty member by naming Kathleen Ford research scientist emeritus.