Michelle Gotto, MA, MA, MPH is the Manager of Clinical Experience and Community Partnerships at the ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Physician Assistant Program in Cleveland, Ohio. Michelle has been with ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ since 2014, as a staff member and graduate student, including two and a half years as curriculum coordinator in the PA Program, before leaving in 2019 to finish her MPH and Master's in Bioethics and Medical Humanities. In May 2024, she also earned an MA in Sociology from ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½. She has always been passionate about PA education and is thrilled to be back in the program, where she looks forward to contributing to students’ clinical year education.
Michelle's scholarship has focused on reproductive, queer, and transgender health, and the right to bodily autonomy for women, the LGBTQIA+ community, and children. She is especially interested in how these rights function when far-right religious ideology becomes legislation that interferes with the clinician-patient relationship. Michelle has published in the Ohio Journal of Public Health, and has a forthcoming concept paper, "Legislating Terror: Theorizing Laws Against Autonomy" in American Studies: Responding to Dobbs, The Reproductive Justice Issue. She has lectured and presented on the criminalization of sexuality, gender, and the body; transgender and intersex medicine; systemic racism and implicit bias in medicine; and bodily autonomy in post-Dobbs America.
Before joining ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½, Michelle spent more than a decade as a manager in the corporate world and has lived in six different states. She is an avid reader and podcast listener, who is always happy to offer a recommendation! Michelle and her husband live in Playhouse Square with their cats, Bear and Birdie. They love to travel, attend live events, and try new restaurants in their free time.