Michelle Taylor, M.D., named to 25 Women to Watch
By Kelvin Childs
Michelle Taylor, M.D., DrPH, MPA, (’97, B.S.) commissioner of health, Baltimore City Health Department, is named to the Baltimore Sun’s third annual “25 Women to Watch.”
“Howard University has been the absolute educational foundation for everything else I have had the blessing to experience!” said Taylor, who earned her bachelor of science degree in biology at The Mecca and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
She was introduced to Howard by her uncle, Jason Miccolo Johnson (’85, B.A.), a renowned documentary, news and fine arts photographer, who gave her a campus tour while she was a teenager. On that visit, he introduced her to comedian and activist Dick Gregory at the Florida Avenue Grill, and Daytime Emmy-award winning actor Al Freeman, Jr., then a professor in Howard’s theater department. Freeman had recently appeared in the 1992 film “Malcolm X” as Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.
“He’s smoking a cigarette in the middle of The Yard. And Jason walks up to him and is, you know, talking to him. And in my 16-year-old mind, I’m looking at this man and I’m like, ‘This is Elijah Muhammad smoking a cigarette,’ because I had seen him on screen as Elijah Muhammad. It was just blowing my mind,” Taylor recalled.
“25 Women to Watch” highlights “the Baltimore area’s most intriguing movers and shakers of 2025,” the Sun stated.
Taylor, a native of Memphis, Tennessee, was named health commissioner in August and confirmed in September. Her chief challenge, she said, is dealing with opioids and overdoses across the city.
“The other priorities are continuing the landmark work that Baltimore City Health Department has done in the maternal and child health space and also focusing on shoring up the public health workforce and infrastructure,” she said. With federal support for health programs being gutted, “local public health departments across the country are going to have to be the bulwark to make sure that we keep a system in place that protects the population’s health,” Taylor said.
Previously, Taylor was director and health officer of the Shelby County Health Department in Shelby County, Tennessee, which incorporates Memphis. Her major challenge in 2021 was the COVID-19 crisis and how it affected the morale of the area’s public health workers.
Giving to the University is crucial, Taylor said. “I believe that alumni should really take seriously the idea that, especially now, especially during this time, our HBCUs need every bit of support. We’ve always needed it. But particularly now, we need it. Howard University in particular must be protected, and it must be protected by the people who know the value of getting an education there.”
Although she sometimes struggled with grades and feeling homesick, Taylor is glad for her Howard experience and knows the University needs alumni support to provide an equivalent experience to today’s students.
“Howard University just instilled in me even more the spirit of service that my family had already instilled in me. I come from a family of military veterans – a family that believes in ‘service before self’ above almost everything else in life. And Howard University just continued to pour that into me and explained to me the history behind why my family had taught me the way I was taught,” Taylor said.
“That’s really what people are contributing to. They’re contributing to foundational leadership in these young people who are coming in and will be the ones who will take care of our communities going forward.
“There’s no greater need, and there’s no greater imperative than that.”
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