Quick Facts
Biography
Rebecca Miriam Cunningham (1970) is an American emergency physician and researcher. She is the vice president for research, director of the Injury Prevention Center, and the William G. Barsan Collegiate Professor in the Michigan Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine.
Career
Cunningham completed her medical residency in an emergency department near Flint, Michigan, which saw a lot of gun violence. She then joined the faculty at the University of Michigan as a lecturer in 1999.
While growing up, Cunningham suffered from violent abuse by her father. After he threatened to kill her mother, her mother bought a hand gun, changed the locks, and sent her older siblings to a foster family. This encouraged her to later lead a federally funded national project called "Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens (FACTS)." In 2010, she published "Screening adolescents in the emergency department for weapon carriage," and later "Firearm Violence Among High-risk Emergency Department Youth After an Assault Injury." She also accepted a position as director of the U-M Injury Prevention Center.
In 2014, Cunningham was appointed the Associate Chair for Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine. In this role, she collaborated with other researchers and institutions to produce a website that offers free access to data on guns, as well as training for health care providers. A few years later, she was promoted to associate vice president for research-health sciences in the University of Michigan Office of Research for three years.
Two years later, Cunningham was the recipient of the William G. Barsan Collegiate Professorship. She was also elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine and named interim vice president for research.