LANSING – Dr. Alexis Travis has been named the new senior deputy director for the Public Health Administration at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and will start on May 30.

Travis joined MDHHS in 2018 and most recently served as senior deputy director of MDHHS’s Aging & Adult Services Agency (AASA), where she provided statewide leadership, direction, and resources to support Michigan’s aging, adult services, and disability networks. In this role she advanced health equity for older adults and led efforts to address the need to expand the direct care workforce. She led AASA in Michigan to become the fifth state in the nation and first in the Midwest to join the World Health Organization and AARP age-friendly initiative. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Travis worked with the AASA team and the state’s aging network to launch many innovative programs to address food insecurity, social isolation and support risk mitigation in one of the highest risk populations of older adults in Michigan.

Prior to that to her work with AASA, Travis served as director of MDHHS’s Bureau of Health and Wellness within the Population Health Administration where she managed the Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Control and the Division of HIV and STD Programs. In that role, she collaborated with stakeholders to develop a state dementia plan and established a state-level public health workgroup on healthy aging, which she continues to lead.

As senior deputy director of public health, Travis will oversee the Bureau of Laboratories, Bureau of Epidemiology and Public Health, Bureau of Health and Wellness, Bureau of Infectious Disease Prevention and the Bureau of EMS, Trauma, and Preparedness. She will work with local, state, and federal partners to develop and implement public health policies. Dr. Travis will continue to report to Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, who will continue in her role as chief deputy director of health and chief medical executive for MDHHS.

“Dr. Travis is a champion of public health and has driven measurable positive change in her time at MDHHS. She continues to be an integral asset in reducing health disparities and increasing health equity for Michiganders,” said MDHHS director Elizabeth Hertel. “She is well-suited to develop strategies and programs to promote the health of Michiganders, and we’re excited to have her in this role.”

Travis holds a doctorate in public health from Walden University in Minnesota, a master’s degree of pharmacy with honors from the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom and was a participant in the Socrates/Erasmus Student Exchange Program at the University of Salamanca in Spain. She is a graduate of the Local Public Health Institute of Massachusetts/Boston University School of Public Health Managing Effectively in Today’s Public Health Environment Class of 2017.