APTR | Promoting Health Through Prevention Education and Research

2012 Award Recipient

Matthew Boulton, MD, MPH is recognized for his achievement and outstanding contributions to the field of prevention and public health education.

The Duncan Clark Award is presented to a senior level person with a distinguished record of achievement in the areas of teaching, research, and/or advocacy in the field of public health and prevention.

Dr. Boulton holds professorial appointments in the Department of Epidemiology, the Department of Health Management and Policy, and in Preventive Medicine at the School of Public Health and in the Department of Internal Medicine, Infectious Disease Division, in the School of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He has been Director of the Public Health/Preventive Medicine Residency, named the 2007 Association for Prevention Teaching and Research’s National Outstanding Educational Program of the Year, for over a decade and is Director of the CDC/HRSA-funded Center of Excellence in Public Health Workforce Studies which serves as technical lead on federal government’s enumeration and characterization of the national public health workforce. Dr. Boulton founded and is the Director of the School of Public Health’s China Scholar Exchange Program; collaborating with the China CDC, Tianjin CDC, and Shanghai CDC to facilitate scholar exchange and joint applied research which is supported by his $3.75 million/5 year NIH research grant on vaccine preventable diseases. In June 2009, Dr. Boulton was formally appointed by the Chinese government as Senior Scientific Advisor to the Tianjin CDC in recognition of his contributions to improving public health and assisting with measles elimination in China. Dr. Boulton also works with the Public Health Foundation in New Delhi, India, helping with public health training for physicians and evaluation of vaccine delivery strategies in rural India. Dr. Boulton was the School of Public Health’s first Associate Dean of Practice from Sept 2004 to Aug 2010 and founded and served as first Director of the Office of Public Health Practice during that same period.

Prior to his tenure at the University of Michigan, Dr. Boulton was the Chief Medical Executive, State Epidemiologist, and Director of the Bureau of Epidemiology for the Michigan Department of Community Health where he served as the governor’s lead scientist/epidemiologist from 1997-2004 overseeing all communicable disease control, immunization programs, environmental health, and vital records/health statistics for the State of Michigan. He is past Vice President of the Michigan Public Health Institute, a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, and during his time as State Epidemiologist was commissioned in the U.S. FDA while also serving several years on the Executive Board of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. He has been appointed the last three years to the U.S. CDC's Board of Scientific Counselors for Infectious Diseases and last year was named to the CDC’s Food Safety Modernization Act Surveillance Workgroup which is charged with providing recommendations for implementation of national food safety legislation signed by President Obama.

Dr. Boulton has been an author on over 100 peer review publications and abstracts, and has published a number of major technical reports for the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologist and other national public health professional groups in addition to book chapters on infectious diseases. He has research interests in the field control of infectious diseases, analytic and applied epidemiology, vaccine-preventable illnesses, building epidemiology and laboratory capacity in the public health system, and public health in China and India and is currently PI on over $2 million/year of extramural research and training funds. He is a peer reviewer for over 10 public health, medical, and scientific journals and currently serves on the editorial boards of four journals including the U.S. CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, Public Health Reports, and the journal, Bioterrorism and Biodefense. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the University of Michigan School of Public Health’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2002), the Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award (2009), the John H. Romani Award for Outstanding Leadership in Public Health (2011), the Michigan Public Health Association’s Distinguished Service Award (2004), the Michigan Association of Local Public Health’s Community Service Award for the SPH Office of Public Health Practice (2008), the APTR’s F. Marian Bishop Outstanding Educator of the Year (2005), the Chinese government’s Public Health Practice Award (2009), and the University of Nevada School of Medicine’s Distinguished Alumni Advisory Committee (2011). He has been a member of Alpha Omega Alpha since his second year of medical school. He resides in Ann Arbor, MI, is married with four children, and his hobbies are piano, classical music, reading, and international travel with his wife, Chitra.

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