Abdul El-Sayed

In September 2018, El-Sayed launched a political action committee, Southpaw MI PAC, to support liberal down-ballot candidates and take positions on ballot initiatives.

On February 9, 2017, the Detroit News reported that El-Sayed would resign as health director to run for governor of Michigan in the 2018 Democratic Party primary. He officially announced his candidacy on February 25, 2017. El-Sayed was inspired to run for governor following the Flint water crisis, saying, "I watched as Governor Snyder and his team of accountants were cutting costs and cutting corners. Their inattention to communities ultimately poisoned thousands of children - and those children were the very ones that I was serving at the helm of the health department. ... And that's something I didn't believe in. I believe in government as something we do in this country for the people and by the people".

El-Sayed was endorsed by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic congressional nominee and democratic socialist activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and 2017 Women's March organizer Linda Sarsour. He was also endorsed by the organization Justice Democrats and The Nation magazine. In the August 7 primary he received 340,560 votes, about 30% of the vote, losing to Gretchen Whitmer.

In 2016 El-Sayed was named one of Crain's Detroit's "40 under 40", and "Public Official of the Year" by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. In 2017 the University of Michigan awarded him a Bicentennial Alumni Award, awarded to 20 alumni "whose achievements carry on Michigan's traditions of intellectual creativity and academic endeavor, of civic engagement, and of national and international service."

El-Sayed was executive director of the Detroit Health Department and Health Officer for the City of Detroit from 2015 to 2017. In 2017 he resigned as health director to run for governor. He was also formerly an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University.

In August 2015 Mayor Mike Duggan appointed El-Sayed Health Officer and Executive Director of the Detroit Health Department, making him, at 30 years old, the youngest health officer in a major US city at the time. In that role, he was charged with rebuilding the Detroit Health Department after government public health activities were provided by a nonprofit before the City of Detroit's municipal bankruptcy in 2012. On his first day on the job El-Sayed arrived at a small office space in the back of Detroit's parking department overseeing five employees. In his first year as director he led efforts to oppose increases in sulfur dioxide emissions by Marathon Petroleum's Southwest Refinery, which resulted in reductions in overall emissions. He also led efforts to test Detroit schools for lead in the wake of Flint's Water crisis, provide free glasses to children in Detroit city schools, and transform the city's troubled Animal Control department.

In 2014 El-Sayed joined the faculty at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health as assistant professor in the department of epidemiology. He served as director of Columbia's Systems Science Program and Global Research Analytics for Population Health. As a researcher, he has authored over 100 scientific publications, including articles, commentaries, book chapters, and abstracts, about health disparities, birth outcomes, and obesity. His research has been cited over 700 times. He is the recipient of several research awards, including being named one of the Carnegie Council's Policy Innovators. He created and taught the Mailman School's first course on systems science and population health. He co-edited a textbook on the topic with Sandro Galea published in 2017 by Oxford University Press, "Systems Science and Population Health".

El-Sayed was awarded a full-tuition scholarship to attend the University of Michigan Medical School, where he completed his first two years of medical school. There he led a student medical mission to Peru and founded a student organization that raised money and coordinated community service for a local free clinic. As a second-year medical student, he declined a Marshall Scholarship and accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he completed a PhD in public health in 2011. While at Oxford, he earned a full blue as captain of Oxford's men's lacrosse team. In 2014, he completed his MD at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and was funded by the Soros Fellowship for New Americans and Medical Scientist Training Program. El-Sayed did not complete a residency after medical school and is therefore not licensed to practice medicine.

El-Sayed graduated in 2003 from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, where he was a three-sport athlete—wrestling, football, and lacrosse—and a captain in the latter two. El-Sayed attended the University of Michigan, where he majored in biology and political science, and played on the men's club lacrosse team. He won the William Jennings Bryan Prize for Political Science, graduated with Highest Distinction, and delivered the student commencement speech in front of president Bill Clinton, who delivered the 2007 commencement address.

Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed (born October 31, 1984) is an American politician, former public health professor, medical doctor, and civil servant. He was a candidate in Michigan's 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary election, placing second out of three candidates. In September 2018 he founded Southpaw Michigan, a political action committee, to help elect other progressive candidates in Michigan.