Rate My Professor Kelly Kamm

Kelly Kamm is the Copper Shores Community Health Foundation Endowed Assistant Teaching Professor and Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology, as well as Assistant Teaching Professor in Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University. She earned her PhD in Epidemiology from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2014, focusing her dissertation on handwashing with soap to improve child health in low-resource settings. Kamm also holds a Master of Health Science in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1997 and a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from Washington State University in 1996, graduating summa cum laude. Her career includes roles as Research Assistant Professor at Michigan Technological University from 2017 to 2019, Post-doctoral Fellow and Research Scientist at SUNY Buffalo from 2014 to 2016, Manager of Lab Operations and earlier positions at Cerep, Inc. from 1999 to 2008, and Emerging Infectious Diseases Training Fellow at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment from 1997 to 1998.

Kamm's research interests include rural health, maternal and child health, breastfeeding, care-seeking behaviors, hand hygiene, and social determinants of health. She studies determinants of health in young children and the elderly in rural U.S. regions to develop scalable interventions improving nutrition and quality of life in low-resource communities. Key publications feature 'Barriers to and motivators of handwashing behavior among mothers of neonates in rural Bangladesh' (BMC Public Health, 2018), 'Impact of an intensive perinatal handwashing promotion intervention on maternal handwashing behavior in the neonatal period' (BioMed Research International, 2017), 'Is pregnancy a teachable moment to promote handwashing with soap among primiparous women in rural Bangladesh?' (Tropical Medicine & International Health, 2016), and 'Associations with handwashing in the home and respiratory and diarrheal illness in children under five years old in rural western Kenya' (Tropical Medicine & International Health, 2014). Awards include the Saxon Graham Award for Academic Excellence in Epidemiology (2015, 2016), First Prize at the 23rd Annual J. Warren Perry Poster Presentations (2011), University at Buffalo Presidential Fellowship (2008-2012), Outstanding Faculty Award at the 16th Annual Fraternity and Sorority Life Awards Ceremony (2022), and selection to the SDOH Hub Advisory Council (2024). She teaches KIP 2600: Introduction to Public Health and KIP 4740: Epidemiology.