Four University of Michigan faculty have been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors in medical research.

Kenneth Langa, Erica Marsh, Santa Ono and Marc Zimmerman are among 100 newly elected health and medical scientists recognized for their outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

The four researchers were honored for work related to aging and dementia, women’s reproductive health, eye disease and violence prevention.

They join 79 other current, former and late U-M faculty who have earned this distinction. NAM members help the congressionally chartered, private nonprofit organization provide objective advice to the nation on key health issues.

Kenneth Langa
Cyrus Sturgis Research Professor of Medicine, professor of internal medicine, Medical School; research professor, Institute of Gerontology; research professor, Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research; professor of health management and policy, School of Public Health

Langa’s work centers on one of the largest medical, economic and social issues facing the nation: dementia, and its forerunner, cognitive impairment. As a primary care physician and social scientist, he has led numerous studies advancing understanding of the risk factors, prevalence, outcomes and trends of these conditions in the United States and beyond.

His work has documented significant disparities by race, education and wealth. He has translated this work into data sources and analytical methods that researchers, clinicians and policymakers can use to identify strategies to prevent cognitive decline, and understand the full impact of dementia on patients, families and societies.

Langa co-directs the Health and Retirement Study, the largest and longest-running national longitudinal study of U.S. adults. He recently co-led the effort to win a $195 million renewal of the National Institute on Aging grant that funds the HRS—the largest research grant ever received by U-M. In addition to using data from the HRS in his own work, he co-leads an international effort to harmonize HRS data with data from similar studies in other countries.

In addition to his more than 350 peer-reviewed research publications and 24 years of clinical care for veterans at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, Langa has mentored dozens of early-career researchers across U-M. He was previously elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and received the Distinguished Clinical and Translational Research Mentor Award from the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research.

A member of the U-M faculty since 1999, he is a past member of the VA Center for Clinical Management Research and current member of the Institute of Gerontology at the U-M Geriatrics Center, the Center to Accelerate Population Research in Alzheimer’s, the Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging and the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. He also has served on two NAM committees related to dementia prevention and is a current member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Population.

Langa is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Chicago’s schools of public policy and medicine, and completed his residency and health services research training at U-M, the latter though the forerunner of today’s National Clinician Scholars Program.

Erica Marsh
University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor; S. Jan Behrman Collegiate Professor of Reproductive Medicine, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, Medical School; professor of women’s and gender studies, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

Marsh has built an international reputation as a leader in the biological, genetic and social factors contributing to reproductive disorders and disparities in reproductive health. She is also recognized for her leadership in community-engaged research and community service. Her research and clinical practices have focused on health care disparities in the prevalence, impact and treatment of uterine fibroids, abnormal uterine bleeding, obesity, ovarian reserve and infertility.

Taking a comparative reproductive health approach across populations, Marsh has won funding from the National Institutes of Health and the federal Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, as well as foundations and industry. She was recently awarded a $7.8 million NIH grant to study the factors underlying health disparities and uterine fibroids.

As co-principal investigator on the $71 million grant that fuels the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research, she is a leader in U-M’s effort to accelerate the translation of biomedical research findings into effective disease therapies. She serves as an associate director of MICHR, directing community engagement and health equity efforts.

Marsh founded and directs U-M’s Women’s Health and Reproductive Disparities Collaborative and leads or co-leads its studies, including the ELLAS study of fibroids in Latina women, the SOAR project investigating ovarian aging in African American women, and the Michigan CEAL and CIVIC studies focused on COVID-19 equity.

The author of more than 110 peer-reviewed publications, she has won multiple awards including the Ira and Ester Rosenwaks New Investigator Award from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, an American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Mentor Award, and election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Marsh joined the U-M faculty in 2016 after training at Harvard College, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Massachusetts General Hospital, and Northwestern University, where she earned a master’s degree in clinical investigation and pursued subspecialty training in infertility. She also served on the faculty at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, where she founded a nationally recognized high school pipeline program and won multiple community service awards.

She is the current president of the Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, and on the boards of ACOG and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. She also is a member of the REI Section of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

Santa Ono
U-M president; chair of the U-M Health Board, professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, professor of microbiology and immunology, Medical School; professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

As a molecular immunologist, Ono has studied the regulation of the immune response and the pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration. He has taught at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University and University College London. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in biological sciences from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in experimental medicine from McGill University.

As a recognized leader in higher education in the United States and Canada, Ono has served as the senior vice provost and deputy to the provost at Emory University and president of the University of Cincinnati, where he also was a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He was president and vice chancellor of the University of British Columbia, where he also chaired the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities and the Research Universities of British Columbia, and served on the board of Universities Canada.

In addition to his duties as U-M president, Ono chairs the University Climate Change Coalition, and is an honorary chairperson of the Japan America Society of Michigan and Southwestern Ontario. He also was appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to serve on the executive committee of Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the Growing Michigan Together Council.

Ono is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, USA and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars.
He has advised national and regional governments on higher education and mental health, as well as companies such as GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Novartis. He also served as director and chief scientific officer of iCo Therapeutics.

Now in the third year of his presidency, Ono has catalyzed the creation of an animating vision for the university—Vision 2034—and its related Campus Plan 2050, through which U-M will seek to become the defining public university and make groundbreaking discoveries that impact the greatest challenges facing humanity.

Marc Zimmerman
Marshall H. Becker Collegiate Professor of Public Health, professor of health behavior and health equity, School of Public Health; professor of psychology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts; co-director, Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention

Zimmerman’s research focuses on the application and development of empowerment theory and positive youth development. His interests include evaluating individual and community resilience and contextual influences on community health. His work also focuses on youth violence and firearm injury prevention as well as developmental transitions and longitudinal models of change. He has translated his research on individual and community risk and promotive factors to develop and evaluate community-based programs, with an emphasis on prevention of community violence.

Zimmerman has led many projects evaluating violence prevention such as community greening and vacant lot reuse, school safety programs and community firearm injury prevention. In addition, he leads or co-leads federally funded initiatives including the National Center for School Safety funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance; the NIH-funded Community Firearm Violence Prevention Network; and the Prevention Research Center of Michigan and Michigan Youth Violence Prevention Center, both funded by the CDC. He is also the founding scholar and led development and evaluation of the evidence-based after school program Youth Empowerment Solutions.

Zimmerman was instrumental in developing and launching two significant learning opportunities at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention: the most comprehensive massive open online course on the subject to date, which features more than 35 faculty and leaders from more than 16 institutions across the U.S., and the first T32 postdoctoral training program funded by the NIH that focuses specifically on firearm injury prevention.

Although most of his work includes community prevention program development and evaluation with community partners, he also conducts survey research, longitudinal studies and more in-depth qualitative approaches. He has more than 30 years of experience leading multidisciplinary teams and coordinating large initiatives, and is editor of Youth & Society, editor emeritus of Health Education & Behavior and a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.