Vicki Johnson-Lawrence

Vicki Johnson-Lawrence is a public health expert with over 20 years of experience in public health research, with a focus on community-engaged methods to improve behavioral health over the life course. Dr. Johnson-Lawrence has led multiple public health initiatives aimed to improve health outcomes using evidence-based and trauma-informed practices. Her recent work has used community engagement and implementation science methods to bolster the study, translation, and adoption of evidence-based approaches to support mental and behavioral health in distressed communities. She is the Program Director for the Community Health and Implementation Research Program. She is an epidemiologist and skilled in community engaged methods, quantitative analyses, and multilevel community interventions.

Dr. Johnson-Lawrence currently focuses on mental, behavioral, and psychosocial health for distressed communities and older adult populations. She is leading new and ongoing research and evaluation work in the areas of chronic disease prevention and management, patient centered outcomes, violence prevention, and promotion of safe community environments for families and older adults that bolster health and wellbeing. She also works on various community-centered implementation science studies.

Prior to joining RTI, Dr. Johnson-Lawrence was a principal public health researcher and faculty member at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan-Flint. Her work addressed chronic disease and mental health needs within traumatized communities using participatory methods. Her work with ReCAST— a project completed in 2020—used community specific strategies to promote behavioral health and well-being for residents of Flint, MI. The project promoted skills for psychological recovery, facilitated family-based behavioral health programming, and boosted community violence prevention programming in the Flint community in the wake of the Flint Water Crisis. She also led the Church Challenge in Flint, a community-based participatory multilevel intervention research study to promote wellness and blood pressure management among church goers amid a community disaster response. Other work included identifying universal strengths-based parenting support to enhance developmental and mental health outcomes for young children potentially affected by Flint Water Crisis.  

Along with research designed to study and improve public health, Dr. Johnson-Lawrence served as the Flint Co-Leader for the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research (MCUAAAR). Her focus was to expand the reach and impact of the program by recruiting and mentoring the next generation of National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers study aging populations, and increasing the participation of older adults in clinical research. 

Dr. Johnson-Lawrence has been a member of several professional associations, including the American Public Health Association and the Gerontological Society of America. She has received several professional honors and awards, co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, and been featured in the media in recognition of her work.