When Abdul El-Sayed walked into Detroit’s health department in 2015, he found about 85 employees crammed into the back of a municipal parking building. The city had recently gone bankrupt and the 185-year-old institution was placed under state emergency management. His job was to rebuild it from practically nothing.
Within a year and a half, El-Sayed, who has a medical degree and PhD in public health, said he expanded the department to 220 staff members, opened a new headquarters and launched efforts that still define his reputation: free glasses for low-income schoolchildren; a legal fight that forced an energy company to invest $10m to improve air quality; lead testing in every school, daycare and Head Start facility in the city; and a peer mentor program for newly pregnant moms to address a surge in infant and maternal mortality.
