On Monday, Dr. Mona Hanna announces the launch of RxKids -- a program that gives money to new mothers -- in Detroit. Also announced this week was the TIME100 Health list, on which Hannah is recognized. (Photo courtesy of Michigan State University)

ESCANABA — Dr. Mona Hanna, pediatrician and associate dean for public health at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, has been named to the 2026 TIME100 Health list.

The prestigious list annually recognizes 100 of the world’s most influential figures in the health sphere.

Hanna is the founder of RxKids, a revolutionary program that issues checks to new parents with no strings attached.

“As the nation’s first-ever community-wide prenatal and infant cash prescription program, Rx Kids is providing life-changing financial security that is universal and unconditional,” states RxKids.org.

Through the program, mothers receive $1,500 during pregnancy, and after a baby’s birth, caregivers receive $500 a month for a designated length of time that varies between 6 to 12 months.

Dr. Mona Hanna (TIME photo-illustration)

“The maternal-infant period is among the most economically challenging due to a drop in income and a rise in expenses,” MSU explained.

Though administered through a branch of MSU, the funding for RxKids comes from a range of private and public partnerships.

After first launching in Flint in 2024, the program saw success and has rapidly been expanding into other Michigan communities “with momentum to shape the lives of thousands of families locally, regionally, and nationally,” RxKids reports.

Last year, the Daily Press produced an article (entitled “UP program gives cash to parents of newborns,” published Feb. 21, 2025) about the program when it expanded into five counties in the Eastern Upper Peninsula.

Most recently, RxKids was announced to be launching in Detroit, marking the biggest expansion so far.

“With approximately 8,000 babies born in Detroit each year, the expansion represents an unprecedented investment in the city’s youngest residents — reaching families at scale and positioning Detroit as one of the most baby-friendly cities in the nation,” said an MSU release when the launch kicked off on Monday.

“Every child born in Michigan deserves the chance to achieve health and wealth. Rx Kids is a bold idea that does something simple to respond to fight poverty and respond to health disparities: it puts money directly in Michiganders’ pockets,” said Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II.

“Dr. Mona isn’t just treating symptoms — she’s reimagining a world where no baby is born into poverty,” said MSU in a press release.

TIME clearly feels similarly.

“To select the 100 individuals on the TIME100 Health list, TIME’s correspondents and editors spent months consulting sources and experts around the globe to identify the individuals behind the defining health stories of the year — from promising clinical trials and breakthrough immunotherapies, to advances in the search for cancer vaccines, the release of the first GLP-1 pill by Novo Nordisk, and leaders around the world stepping up to fill critical gaps following reductions in international aid and medical research funding under the Trump Administration,” wrote TIME editors about the 2026 list. “The result is a community of scientists, doctors, advocates, educators, policymakers, and others who are transforming the health of the world.”

Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for reshaping public health, Nathan Fielder for using comedy to draw attention to mental health, Thierry Diagana fro finding a new malaria drug, JOhn Evans for gene-editing therapy and Peter Sands for filling funding gaps.

Hanna previously was named to a TIME100 list; she was heralded in 2016 for exposing the Flint water crisis and leading recovery efforts.

The 2026 TIME100 list appears in the issue available on newsstands this Friday and online now.