Sue Grady

Sue C. Grady
  • Professor
  • Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences

WEBSITE

https://geo.msu.edu/directory/grady-sue.html

BIOGRAPHY

As a medical geographer, my research aims to improve the health and well-being of infants, children, men and women living in high poverty urban and rural areas.  I focus on the societal determinants of health--physical, social and built environmental hazards, individual and population-level exposures and the adverse health outcomes and premature mortality that result from those exposures.  I utilize geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial epidemiological methods to analyze large health, linked-mortality and environmental datasets to model these multilevel and space-time relationships.  

AREA OF EXPERTISE

Most of my research is in the United States, in the Midwest and Northeast Regions, where inner-city urban residents are exposed to hypersegregation, concentrated poverty, high pollution levels and other related environmental hazards.  In particular, I am interested in reducing maternal (pregnancy-related) untoward exposures and adverse birth outcomes--low birth weight, preterm birth and neonatal and infant mortality and maternal mortality among black mothers and infants living in those areas.  My research is also international, focusing on distal and proximal determinants of maternal and infant mortality in extremely poor parts of the world.