Detroit Appoints Top Dearborn Official To Lead Public Health

DETROIT — Detriot Mayor Mary Sheffield appointed Ali Abazeed as the city's new chief public health officer.

Abazeed comes from Dearborn, where he served as the city's top health official and is credited for building Dearborn's local public health department from the ground up.

Abazeed will be tasked with partnering with other city departments "to build internal policies that advance core public health principles in all operations, from economic development and transportation to public works and beyond," officials said.

Focus areas will include prioritizing chronic disease mitigation, driving further reductions in the city’s infant mortality rates and reframing the Detroit Health Department’s public notification and education strategies with revised communications campaigns, officials said.

"City government touches people's lives in countless ways, which means there are countless ways we can apply public health considerations into the work every department is doing," Sheffield said in a statement. "Ali's work in Dearborn has shown the impact this can have and that's the vision he is bringing to the Detroit Health Department."

Abazeed was born in Detroit and raised in Dearborn. He earned an M.P.H., M.P.P., and B.S. from the University of Michigan before moving to Washington, D.C. in 2017, where he served as a public health advisor at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

In D.C., he worked across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) in the Office of the Secretary, Office of Refugee Resettlement, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, advising senior federal leadership on policy and helping shape national priorities.

He returned to Michigan in 2022 and joined Dearborn's Mayor Abdullah Hammoud's administration as the founding director of public health. He was eventually named chief public health officer and helped Dearborn become just the second city in Michigan besides Detroit with a standalone municipal health department.

Dearborn saw a 60 percent drop in drug overdoses and expanded air quality monitoring across the city under Abazeed's leadership.

He also brought the RxKids program to Dearborn, a critical cash assistance initiative that Sheffield recently launched locally, making Detroit the largest city to adopt the maternal and infant health program.

"Public health is the foundation of opportunity. When children are healthy and neighborhoods are thriving, everything else becomes possible," Abazeed said. "Under Mayor Sheffield's leadership, Detroit has an opportunity to become a national model for what bold public health can achieve. The decisions we make across every department can help Detroiters live long and healthy lives."