Leadership
Patrick Carter, MD
Co-Director
Dr. Carter is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine (School of Medicine) and Health Behavior & Health Education (School of Public Health) at the University of Michigan. He is the Co-Director of the UM Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, the Director of the CDC-funded University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center, and part of the leadership team for the NICHD-funded Firearm Safety among Children and Teens (FACTS) Consortium. Dr. Carter’s research is within the field of firearm injury prevention, specifically the development, testing, and implementation of emergency department (ED)‐based interventions to decrease firearm violence, youth violence, and associated risk behaviors such as substance use among high‐risk urban youth populations. He also has a line of research focused on using intensive longitudinal data, collected via innovative m-health applications, to characterize epidemiological and contextual factors underlying adolescent risky firearm behaviors. He is the past Chair of the ACEP Trauma and Injury Prevention Section, serves as an Assistant Editor for the Annals of Emergency Medicine, and has served as a member of the Technical Advisory Group focused on developing a firearm research agenda for the American College of Emergency Physicians. Dr. Carter has research funding as a PI or Co-I on grants from NIDA, NIAAA, CDCP, and NICHD, all focused within the field of violence and injury prevention.
Marc Zimmerman, PhD
Co-Director
Dr. Zimmerman is the Marshall H. Becker Collegiate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health and editor of the Youth & Society. He is also editor emerita of Health Education & Behavior. He is the Co-Director of the UM Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, Director of the CDC-funded Michigan Youth Violence Prevention Center and the Prevention Research Center, Co-Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance funded National Center for School Safety, and Co-Director of the Outreach and Translation Core of the CDC-funded U-M Injury Prevention Center. He is also a founding scholar for Youth Empowerment Solutions, an evidence-based youth violence prevention program. Dr. Zimmerman’s research focuses on the application and development of empowerment theory and the study of adolescent health and resiliency. He has translated his research on individual and community risk and promotive factors to develop and evaluate community-based programs with an emphasis on prevention of community violence. Dr. Zimmerman also studies developmental transitions and longitudinal models of change. Dr. Zimmerman contributed to the U-M IPC Massive Open Online Course, “Injury Prevention for Children and Teens” in the Introduction to Child and Adolescent Injuries section.
Jessica Roche, MPH
Managing Director
Ms. Roche is the Managing Director of the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. Prior to that, Ms. Roche was a part of the CDC-funded U-M Injury Prevention Center since 2010, working in the field of injury prevention science since 2009. Ms. Roche has over seven years of experience managing hospital injury data, and managing hospital-based youth violence prevention interventions. Ms. Roche is the Managing Director of the U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention and former Managing Director of the Injury Prevention Center. Ms. Roche has expertise in developing, evaluating, and translating evidence-based programs into practice. She also helped coordinate the development of training and educational tools and resources of the U-M Injury Prevention Center such as the U-M Opioid Solutions micro-site, the U-M Injury Prevention Center MOOC, “Injury Prevention for Children & Teens”, and the MOOC focused on opioid overdose, “Impacting the Opioid Crisis: Prevention, Education, and Practice for Non-Prescribing Providers.”
Sonia Kamat, MS
Deputy Managing Director
Ms. Kamat is the Deputy Managing Director of the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. Prior to joining the institute, she worked at the CDC-funded U-M Injury Prevention Center and has been a part of the Department of Emergency Medicine since 2004. Ms. Kamat has over 19 years of experience at the University supporting and leading research, education, and outreach efforts in injury prevention. She holds an MS degree in Education from Virginia Tech.