Spero M. Manson

Spero M. Manson, Ph.D. (Pembina Chippewa) is a Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry. He occupies the Colorado Trust Chair in American Indian Health, and directs the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health in the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Denver’s Anschutz Medical Center. His programs includes 10 national centers, which pursue research, program development, training, and collaboration with 250 Native communities, spanning rural, reservation, urban, and village settings across the country. Dr. Manson has acquired $250 million in sponsored research to support this work and has published more than 250 articles on the assessment, epidemiology, treatment, and prevention of physical, alcohol, drug, as well as mental health problems over the developmental lifespan of Native people. His numerous awards include the American Public Health Association’s prestigious Rema Lapouse Mental Health Epidemiology Award (1998), 3 special recognition awards from the Indian Health Service (1996, 2004, 2011), election to the Institute of Medicine (2002); 2 Distinguished Mentor Awards from the Gerontological Society of America (2006; 2007); the Association of American Medical Colleges’ Nickens Award (2006); the George Foster Award for Excellence from the Society for Medical Anthropology (2006); the National Institutes of Health Health Disparities Award for Excellence (2008); and the Bronislaw Malinowski Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology (2019). Dr. Manson is widely acknowledged as one of the nation’s leading authorities in regard to Indian and Native health.