Chelsea Wuth LANSING – Dr. Alexis Travis has been named the new senior deputy director for the Public Health Administration at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and will start on May 30. Travis joined MDHHS in 2018 and most recently served as senior deputy director of MDHHS’s Aging & Adult Services Agency (AASA), where she provided statewide leadership, direction, and resources to support Michigan’s aging, adult services, and disability networks. In this role she advanced health equity for older adults and led efforts to address the need to expand the direct care workforce. She led AASA in Michigan to become the fifth state in the nation and first in the Midwest to join the World Health Organization and AARP age-friendly initiative. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Travis worked with the AASA team and the state’s aging network to launch many innovative programs to address food insecurity, social isolation and support risk mitigation in one of the highest risk populations of older adults in Michigan.