About Dr. Megan Threats
Dr. Megan Threats, PhD, MSLIS is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She is the Director of the Health Justice Informatics Lab.
She is also Visting Faculty at the Yale School of Public Health, an affiliate at the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan Gerld R. Ford School of Public Policy, the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies at New York University, the Black Health Informatics Working Group at Brown University, and the Digital Studies Institute.
As a health informaticist and community-based researcher, she uses anti-racist praxis and methods to investigate the existence and elucidate the magnitude of determinants of health and information inequities. The aims of Dr. Threats' research program are to empower marginalized communities to engage in the design and implementation of informatics interventions and consumer health technologies that aim to combat intersecting, multi-level forms of discrimination, including but not limited to, racism and sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. The goal of her research is to translate her findings into the development of policies, programs, and practices that reduce health disparities and improve health outcomes among marginalized communities.
In May 2020, Dr. Threats completed a PhD in Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science where she was a Gates Millennium Scholar, P.E.O. Scholar, and a Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. She received a Master of Library and Information Science from the Syracuse University School of Information Studies and a completed a dual Bachelor of Arts in Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy and Comparative Cultures and Politics at the Michigan State University James Madison College where she was a McNair Scholar.
Dr. Threats has extensive experience working in libraries, public health, public policy, higher education administration and in the technology sector. Mostly notably, she worked as the Public Services and Reference Librarian at the AIDS Library of Philadelphia FIGHT; where she was an American Library Association Emerging Leader. As an intern for former U.S. Senator Carl Levin and as the Director of Educational Policy for the Associated Students of Michigan State University, she gained invaluable advocacy and policy research/writing experience. In her previous professional roles with the Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program, Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, and the i3 Scholars Program, she has demonstrated a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM and health related fields.
Fellowships
Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
Medical Library Association Doctoral Fellowship
Dissertation Completion Fellowship
Association of Research Libraries IRDW Scholar
Awards
School of Information (UMSI) DEI Award
National Institutes of Health (NIH) LRP Award
UNC Dissertation Horizon Award
UNC Chancellor’s Doctoral Candidacy Award
Chancellor’s Doctoral Advancement Award