Welcome! I’m Mike Dolan Fliss.
I’m a public health data scientist focusing on epidemiology, public health informatics, and social justice at UNC Chapel Hill.
I work on social, injury, and environmental public health practice and research, with a preference for projects that address social injustice, health disparities, and lasting and novel public health informatics improvements. I’m committed to centering public health practice and research here in NC at the local and state levels, though also have projects with national connections.
My unique strengths are my diverse practice and education background in epidemiology, data science, informatics, social justice, and management, and my experience directly working with data from dozens of NC DHHS public health data systems.
I work at the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center and the NC Department of Health and Human Services – most often with the Injury & Violence Prevention Branch.
Teaching: I am also a RStudio certified R Trainer. I co-teach a class in the UNC Epidemiology Department (EPID 701) and public workshops on how to use the statistical programming language R for Public Health Epidemiology.
Research Topics: At left you’ll find my resume/curriculum vitae, contact info, and a visual portfolio of select past projects. These include collaborations with county (e.g. community health assessments) and state health departments and national partners that often involve data visualization and spatial/GIS map-making work. My public health focus areas include: opioid abuse & overdose; alcohol and tobacco outlet density; homelessness; disparities in policing, prisons, and racial equity; child maltreatment; and environmental racism (e.g. industrial livestock operations).
Personally, I enjoy gardening, building, and martial arts. After 30 years of practice I train in (and teach) the martial arts aikido and Chen-style tai chi chu’an at a martial arts school I manage, Open Sky Martial Arts in Hillsborough, NC.
Drop a line anytime!
UNC : mike.dolan.fliss@unc.edu
NC DHHS : mike.dolan.fliss@dhhs.nc.gov
Recent Projects & Presentations
Policing Disparities
- Traffic Stops & Racialized Policing
- Focusing on moving violations (not policing poverty & crime) can reduce racial disparities in traffic stops; awarded best Injury Epidemiology paper in 2020, associated blog post.
- Public Health Critical Race Praxis in Traffic Stops – thinking critically about traffic enforcement.
- Applying an Equity Lens to Injury & Violence Prevention, given to Columbia CCISP Symposium
- Observations on the Measurement of North Carolina Traffic Stop Disparities in response to NC Supreme Court case State v. Johnson for Amicus Brief. Cited in dissenting opinion of Justice Earls.
- Racial disparities in traffic enforcement, given to PSU TREC (video)
- Racial disparities in traffic stops (dissertation) (video, dissertation book)
- Public comment at Durham City Council meeting on re-analysis of 2016 Durham Police Department Satisfaction Survey demonstrating racial / income disparities.
- Research cited by NC DOJ, Investigation of the Louisville Metro Police Department / Louisville Metro Government
- Prisons & Jails
- Mortality in Prison – 3rd City Project (data & viz lead)
Environmental Justice
- Public comments on Environmental Justice in North Carolina (2020 – DEQ air monitoring, DEQ dashboard design)
- Contribution to EJ-related amicus briefs with Earth Justice for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2021 – Yucatan, 2022 – Yucatan)
- Co-author with Arbor Quist on disparate exposure & impact of industrial hog operations (paper)
- Lead Duke Data+ student teams to design a prototype environmental data dashboard and open source collection and processing of tobbacco outlet data, and co-led team on neighborhood mapping of social determinants of health.
Injury & Social Epidemiology
- Overdose
- Lead Developer, NC DOJ Opioid Settlement Data Dashboards; CORE-NC team granted Award for Excellence in the Application of the Opioid Litigation Principles; NC DOJ press release on the spending dashboards I built, perhaps first in the country.
- Co-Lead Developer, NC DPH Overdose & Substance Use Action Plan Data Dashboards. Coverage in Journal of Public Health Management & Practice
- Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) 2022 – Integrating Equity Data and Actions into North Carolina’s Overdose Data Dashboard (video)
- Visualizing opioid informatics CSRS / PDMP 2.0 & dashboards (thesis) (video)
- INDepth Podcast hosted by Mighty Fine with Jarred Parish
- Housing & Homelessness
- Homelessness data linkage – People Experiencing Homelessness in NC have Increased Mortality, Including High Overdose, Violence, Injury, and Chronic Disease Death Rates;
- Whitepaper on working with homeless shelter data in NC
- Signed onto amicus brief for supreme court case Grants Pass v Johnson – Punishing homeless individuals for sleeping outdoors (police harassment / arrest) is cruel and unusual punishment.
- Motor Vehicle Crashes
- Lead Developer, NC Transportation Safety & Public Health Data Dashboard
- MVC CISS Data Linkage Project, data linkage lead. NC CISS video.
- Alcohol