Elizabeth Lewis-Michl entered the Hudson Falls school system as a second grader when her mother and stepfather, Helen and Robert Cackener, and two sisters, Deborah and Margaret, moved to Hudson Falls in 1960. She graduated from Hudson Falls High School in 1971, and from Oberlin College in 1975, with a bachelor’s degree in government.
After exploring a variety of jobs and causes, Dr. Lewis-Michl was attracted to public health as a field that combined her interests in politics, women‘s issues and health. She received a Ph.D. in Socio-medical Sciences, an interdisciplinary field combining public health and sociology, from Columbia University in 1990. Her dissertation described how the transformation of nursing education affected the development of the modern hospital.
In 1993, Dr. Lewis-Michl’s training led to a position with the New York State Department of Health, Center for Environmental Health, where she is now Chief of the Community Exposure Research Section. Her first project at the Health Department was a study of environmental factors and breast cancer on Long Island. This study’s suggestive findings spurred others to consider the possible role of air pollution in breast cancer risk.
Dr. Lewis-Michl has led many projects that address environmental health concerns faced by New York State residents. She and her staff work with residents to plan and carry out health studies in communities where unusual environmental exposures or unusual patterns of disease have occurred. Dr. Lewis-Michl is fortunate to have had opportunities to present study proposals and results directly to people affected by them, in every part of New York State. She also shares her perspective on environmental health issues as a member of the faculty of the School of Public Health at the State University at Albany.
Dr. Lewis-Michl lives in Delmar, New York, with her husband of 27 years, Thomas Michl, Professor of Economics at Colgate University. They have a son Glyn, 19, and daughter Meredith, 15.