The Beckman Institute recently welcomed Michael Lotspeich-Yadao as an affiliate faculty member.

At Beckman, Lotspeich-Yadao collaborates with Chung-Yi Chiu of Health and Kinesiology in the development of instrumentation and health interventions for military veterans, as well as Deana McDonagh and Susann Sears in integrating empathetic design with social epidemiological methods to understand health outcomes for people with disabilities.

Lotspeich-Yadao joined the College of Applied Health Sciences at Illinois in 2021 to lead veteran health initiatives through the Chez Veterans Center as a research assistant professor. Prior to that, he earned a Ph.D. in rural sociology at Baylor University, and he continues to serve as a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserve as an intelligence officer supporting psychological operations and civil affairs.

Lotspeich-Yadao is interested in how economic and social precarity shape health outcomes among rural communities and military veterans. He uses population health methods and administrative microdata to identify pathways through which instability creates health disparities. Through Illinois Extension, his lab translates this research into actionable programmatic interventions while training the next generation of agricultural social scientists.

“Rural health challenges are shaped by economics, biology, environment and social infrastructure simultaneously — no single discipline can capture that complexity.,” Lotspeich-Yadao said. “Beckman makes it possible to integrate population health with biological measurement, empathetic design and translational programming in ways that can move from mechanisms to real interventions. That's the kind of interdisciplinary science that can make a real difference for veterans and the agricultural communities I grew up in.”

Lotspeich-Yadao is excited about Beckman’s ability to bring experts together to consider how research can shape health in rural America.