Abdul El-Sayed

El-Sayed was born in the Detroit metropolitan area to Egyptian immigrant parents. He grew up in the Detroit area with his father, Mohamed, and stepmother, Jacqueline, a native of Gratiot County, Michigan. Both are engineers. His father grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and immigrated to the U.S. to study engineering at Wayne State University. His mother, Fatten Elkomy, is a nurse practitioner in Missouri. El-Sayed graduated in 2003 from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, where he was a three-sport athlete—wrestling, football, and lacrosse—and a captain in the latter two. He won the William Jennings Bryan Prize for Political Science, graduated with Highest Distinction, and delivered the student commencement speech in front of president Bill Clinton, who delivered the 2007 commencement address. El-Sayed received a full-tuition scholarship to attend the University of Michigan Medical School, where he completed his first two years of medical school. There he led a student medical mission to Peru and founded a student organization that raised money and coordinated community service for a local free clinic. As a second-year medical student, he declined a Marshall Scholarship and accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he completed a doctorate in public health in 2011. At Oxford, he earned a full blue as captain of the men's lacrosse team. In 2014, he completed his MD at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and was funded by the Soros Fellowship for New Americans and Medical Scientist Training Program. El-Sayed did not pursue a residency after medical school and is therefore not licensed to practice medicine. == Career in public health ==

El-Sayed is the author of over 100 scholarly articles, abstracts, and book chapters on public health policy, social epidemiology, and health disparities. His essays on public health policy have also been published in The New York Times, CNN, The Hill, HuffPost, The Detroit News, and the Detroit Free Press. Public health professor In 2014, El-Sayed joined the faculty at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health as an assistant professor in the epidemiology department. He served as director of Columbia's Systems Science Program and Global Research Analytics for Population Health. He created and taught the Mailman School's first course on systems science and population health. He and Sandro Galea co-edited a textbook on the topic, Systems Science and Population Health, published in 2017 by Oxford University Press. Health Director of Detroit In August 2015, Mayor Mike Duggan appointed El-Sayed Health Officer and Executive Director of the Detroit Health Department, making him, at 30 years old, the youngest health officer in a major U.S. city at the time. In that role, he was charged with rebuilding the Detroit Health Department after government public health activities were provided by a nonprofit before the City of Detroit's municipal bankruptcy in 2012. provide free glasses to children in Detroit city schools, El-Sayed was appointed to the governor's statewide Childhood Lead Elimination Board. He also served on the State of Michigan's Public Health Advisory Commission and the Advisory Committee to the US Secretary of Health & Human Services for Healthy People 2030. In 2016, El-Sayed was named one of Crain's Detroit's "40 under 40" and the Michigan League of Conservation Voters' "Public Official of the Year". In 2017, the University of Michigan awarded him a Bicentennial Alumni Award. Since 2019, El-Sayed has hosted America Dissected with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a podcast about politics and public health produced by Crooked Media. Health Director of Wayne County (2023-2025) In December 2022, El-Sayed was named director of Wayne County's Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services, pending approval by the county commission. He assumed the role in March 2023 and resigned in April 2025. == Political career ==

2018 gubernatorial campaign On February 9, 2017, the Detroit News reported that El-Sayed would resign as health director to run for governor of Michigan in the 2018 Democratic Party primary. El-Sayed pledged to accept no campaign donations from corporations, and raised over $5 million from individual donations. El-Sayed was endorsed by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic congressional nominee and democratic socialist activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and 2017 Women's March organizer Linda Sarsour. He was also endorsed by the organization Justice Democrats and The Nation magazine. In the August 7 primary, he received 340,560 votes, or about 30% of the vote, losing to Gretchen Whitmer. In September 2018, El-Sayed founded Southpaw Michigan, a political action committee, to help elect progressive candidates and support ballot initiatives in Michigan. 2026 Senate campaign in 2025 On April 17, 2025, El-Sayed announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan after incumbent Gary Peters announced he would not run for reelection. The joint campaign became a point of dispute within the Democratic Party. == Political positions==

El-Sayed is a progressive Democrat. He has vowed not to accept PAC donations, only accepting donations from individuals. He served as a national campaign surrogate for Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign, speaking on Sanders's behalf at events and in the media. El-Sayed has criticized Israel over its conduct in the Gaza war; in a January 2024 podcast, he called the war in the Gaza Strip a public health catastrophe and called for a ceasefire. In August 2025, El-Sayed characterized Israel's conduct in Gaza as genocide. He generally opposes United States military aid to foreign countries but has cited the U.S.'s actions during Russia's invasion of Ukraine and in Serbia during the 1990s as examples of beneficial U.S. intervention. In March 2022, he called the Russo-Ukrainian war "a war between democracy and autocracy, between self-government and fascism", condemning Russian president Vladimir Putin as an "authoritarian dictator". El-Sayed supports unionization, having been a member of the SEIU, AFT, UAW, and National Writers Union. He has said union expansion is necessary to protect "worker dignity" in response to the growth of AI. He has expressed support for the PRO Act alongside unionization efforts among further professions such as physicians. El-Sayed supports abolishing ICE, arguing that it no longer functions as a legitimate law enforcement agency. While he has expressed support for securing the Mexico–United States border and for "certain kinds" of border law enforcement, he has called ICE "corrupted at its soul". In 2018, El-Sayed supported repealing Michigan state laws that block local governments from levying a municipal sales tax or enacting rent control laws. In 2025, his campaign website identified clean air and water as a priority; in 2018, he called for tougher enforcement of environmental laws, merging the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Environmental Quality into a single Department of the Environment, and achieving "100% renewable energy" in the state by 2030. == Personal life ==

El-Sayed was born and raised in Southeast Michigan, and lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, Sarah Jukaku, and their two daughters. He is a Muslim. == Publications ==