Mick Tilford, Ph.D., Dedicated to Students, Advancing Public Health in State
| Mick Tilford, Ph.D., has enjoyed an impactful tenure as faculty in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health.
Tilford, a health economist and professor in the college’s Department of Health Policy and Management, appreciates his role in helping to train and mentor countless members of the state’s public health workforce.
“Throughout the years of teaching, I’ve interacted with an unbelievable number of great students,” he said. “I admire their careers as they’re currently doing great things for Arkansas.”
“It’s all about the students for me. I love to write. I think of myself as a writer. I’ve published a couple of papers that I’m extremely proud of. But it’s all about the students for me.”
PROUD MICHIGANDER
Tilford is a native of Jackson, Michigan, a town about 80 miles west of Detroit. As a youth, he resided in a home with his mom, dad and siblings. At a young age, Tilford learned the value of hard-work and accountability, two principles he still greatly values.
“I worked for a soft drink distribution company as a teen,” Tilford said. “I loaded Vernor’s ginger ale and RC colas onto delivery trucks after school — sometimes until 11 o’clock at night.
“But the job kept me out of trouble, and I was able to make a lot of money.”
Times were tough and working was something he had to do, Tilford added.
“We were definitely a blue-collar family,” he said. “My mother worked as a checker at Kroger. We grew up in a relatively poor neighborhood on the east side of Jackson until we moved to the lake my senior year of high school. But those early years, the east side was considered one of the poorer areas in town — especially relative to the west side.”
Once he graduated high school in 1977, Tilford became a truck driver who delivered soft drinks to businesses. While completing one of his deliveries, Tilford crossed paths with a man who encouraged him to do more with his life than drive trucks and deliver sodas. Tilford heeded the encouragement.
Additionally, Tilford’s interest in getting a bachelor’s degree was also sparked by learning how to read at an accelerated rate.
“I took a speed-reading course at the local community college,” he said. “That speed-reading course changed my path in life.”
His next act would eventually impact the lives of many people.
“I wrote a letter to Central Michigan University, and they accepted me into their school,” Tilford said. “The rest is history.”
HEADING TO SCHOOL
Tilford ventured to Mount Pleasant, Michigan — the location of Central Michigan University — with aspirations of earning a business degree. One economics class altered the trajectory of his life. While taking the class, Tilford became enamored with data and research. Ultimately, he earned a high grade in the class.
The success led to Tilford receiving a summer teaching position at Jackson Community College, where he taught introductory statistics to a group of students incarcerated at Jackson State Prison.
It was his first foray into the field of education.
“It took me a while to become comfortable,” he said. “I certainly made my mistakes. There were people in that class in jail for murder. There was violence that took place in their lives every day, which was unbelievable. But I still had to try and teach in that environment. The students in the class put forth great effort to learn statistics.”
While helping the incarcerated individuals, Tilford learned a lot about himself and the significance of making realistic change in the lives of others.
“I often wondered if the class really helped the inmates or was the class, and the program, giving them a sense of false hope,” he said. “I truly believed in the opportunity for those individuals to learn advanced analytics, statistics and to have a chance to succeed in life.”
Inspired to help others attain success and happiness, Tilford earned a business and economics degree from Central Michigan University. He’d later get a master’s in economics from the school. The master’s degree and his experience teaching statistics to the inmates helped Tilford receive a chance to teach introductory statistics and principles of economics at the University of Minnesota at Duluth.
Tilford later enrolled in Wayne State University, located in Detroit, to pursue a doctorate in economics.
“That’s where I found my true love — health care economics,” he said. “Also, I was the first graduate at Wayne State to have taken a health-economics curriculum.”
After earning the doctorate, having spent most of his life in the Great Lakes region, Tilford relocated to the south.
MAJOR IMPACT
Tilford moved to Arkansas to work for the UAMS Department of Pediatrics in the College of Medicine. He spent 16 years in pediatrics before assuming a faculty role in the College of Public Health. For the college, he taught health economics and various other courses. At that time, the college had Arkansas’ only health economics class.
“There was a point when a lot of the people who received training in health economics in Arkansas, I was the one who taught them,” Tilford said with a big smile.
He also recognized the college’s potential beyond health economics. When Tilford arrived, the college only had a part-time Health Policy and Management doctoral program. He played a big role in the school eventually creating a full-time Health Policy and Management doctoral curriculum.
Ultimately, Tilford would serve as chair of Health Policy and Management, a post he held until 2024.
“Being the chair of Health Policy and Management was rewarding because of the many professional connections in health care that allowed me to better serve students and faculty,” he said. “It’s truly the relationships that matter.”
Tilford also worked to grow the school’s analytics programs creating a certificate in analytics and the Master of Science in Healthcare Data Analytics. The analytics programs helped the college gain major funding, a feat that Tilford says is a personal career highlight.
“The analytics programs led to us getting a T32 grant for doctoral training in analytics,” he said. “It’s the college’s first-ever training grant. It’s significant that it’s part of a consortium of universities under the umbrella of the National Institutes of Health. The other colleges are major, well-established schools. It’s a great affiliation for our college.”
Tilford acknowledged that his efforts are about the people of Arkansas and wanting its residents to enjoy good health.
APPRECIATES ARKANSAS
Tilford takes pride in being a Michigander, but he loves Arkansas, too. The decades spent living in the Natural State and striving to improve the health of its people has resulted in Tilford developing an appreciation for Arkansas.
“When I came to Arkansas I realized the opportunity to fish, have a boat, have a lake house was all here,” he said. “We can swim in our lakes, and they’re warm. I love it in Arkansas.”
“I like to fish,” Tilford said. “I like to hunt. I like the people of Arkansas. It’s the right place for me. I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
For those reasons, Tilford wants to continue serving Arkansans by training future public health professionals and conducting innovative research.
“We should use science to improve the lives of people,” he said. “Having the background that I have grounds you into the idea of improving the lives of people in need. I feel like I’ve done that.”
Helping to create well-trained public health professionals is an ideal means to make an impact that can last for many years to come.
“I wake up every day wondering what research we can conduct to improve the health of Arkansans,” Tilford said. “Expanding the number people who can contribute to research is one way to improve health.”