Biography

Mikael Anne Greenwood-Hickman, MPH, brings a mixed methods approach to geriatrics and aging research. Through the application of both quantitative and qualitative methods, her work aims to better understand the lives and behavior of older adults in order to build interventions and tools to preserve cognitive and physical function and promote wellbeing.

Since completing her Master of Public Health in epidemiology at the University of Washington in 2014, Ms. Greenwood-Hickman has served in several roles within public health research teams, including as a data manager, programmer, and project manager. In 2021, Ms. Greenwood-Hickman formally joined the KPWHRI faculty as a collaborative scientist, bringing her operational knowledge and management skills to bear on her scientific portfolio.

Ms. Greenwood-Hickman’s research interests and work are primarily focused on understanding physical activity and sedentary behavior patterns among older adults and developing and testing interventions to promote physical activity and reduce sedentary time. She has been an active collaborator on the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) Study’s Activity Monitoring sub-study since 2018. As part of this work, she has a particular interest in research that links data gathered by accelerometers (activity trackers that electronically detect up-and-down, side-to-side, and back-and-forth motion) to cognitive and physical function outcomes in later life. Her current work in ACT explores applications of the 24-hour activity cycle framework to the epidemiology of aging. Outside of ACT, Ms. Greenwood-Hickman leads accelerometer data collection and processing for ongoing intervention and observational studies using a variety of research and commercial accelerometers and platforms. She pairs this work with qualitative analysis efforts that seek to elucidate participants’ lived experience engaging in physical activity and sedentary behavior research and behavior change.