November 14, 2024—Emma-Louise “Emmilie” Aveling and Ari Ne’eman, new faculty members in Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management, are next door office neighbors who share more than just a wall. They also share a deep commitment to amplifying the oft-silenced voices of the people public health research and policies set out to protect.
Neither Aveling nor Ne’eman is new to Harvard Chan School. Aveling, an expert in qualitative research, joined in 2015 as a visiting scientist and transitioned in 2017 to research scientist. She now serves as a lecturer on health research and qualitative methods. Ne’eman, an expert on disability public policy, graduated from Harvard’s Health Policy PhD program earlier this year and is now an assistant professor.
Ari Ne’eman: Creating a more inclusive society for people with disabilities
Ne’eman’s research focuses on how public policy impacts people with disabilities, specifically in the areas of employment, medical care, and long-term services and supports [resources that can help keep people with disabilities in their homes and out of institutions like nursing homes]. His work asks questions such as: How can we keep people with disabilities in the community and divert them away from institutions? How can the workforce better accommodate people with disabilities? Are health care systems meeting their ethical obligations to people with disabilities?
“Public policy has a very large role to play in supporting the inclusion of people with disabilities in their communities, to a greater degree than perhaps any other group,” Ne’eman said. “I’m a very strong believer in inclusion—as a moral value as well as a sound, evidence-based public policy.”
Ne’eman’s most recent publications have examined the experiences of people with disabilities under age 65 who reside in nursing homes, often because of mental illness; how Medicaid expansion has impacted disability benefits enrollment; and how to monitor changes in long-term services and supports using Census data. His current projects include a study of how the Affordable Care Act impacted the availability of home and community-based services and how privatization of Medicaid impacts outcomes for people with disabilities and older adults.
Ne’eman’s research is guided by years working in disability rights advocacy. Prior to pursuing his PhD, he co-founded and led the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, a national organization run by autistic people who advocate to be included in the legislative decisions that affect them. He also worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, helping form the organization’s engagement in disability rights; advised the Obama administration on disability policy as an appointee to the National Council on Disability; and served as a consultant to the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services, advising on issues relating to disability discrimination.
“I decided to enter the research world because I wanted to be able to explore the issues we worked on [as disability rights advocates] in all their complexity and nuances,” Ne’eman said, adding that he views academia and advocacy as inextricably linked. “Optimally, research has practical relevance to decisionmakers and is informing public policy. Similarly, advocates should endeavor to ground their work in a rigorous understanding of what works and what’s true.”
Ne’eman says he looks forward to conducting action-oriented research alongside his department colleagues. “People in the Department of Health Policy and Management work together on joint projects and shared research. It’s just an incredible community of scholars with a very collaborative dynamic,” he said.
He also looks forward to mentoring students. “I think students benefit from the opportunity to do things in the real world,” Ne’eman said. “I hope to encourage them to turn an assignment they wrote for class into an op-ed, or give legislative testimony, or any number of different things. I want them to see themselves as more than just people in training. Students have interests, passions, beliefs, and the ability to make an impact today.”
Quick hits
Who, dead or alive, would you host for a dinner party, and what would you cook? Judy Heumann, Alexander Hamilton, and Berl Katznelson. My perspective on hospitality is, in the immortal words of Liberace, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.” I would cook duck à l’orange, tuna tataki, and London broil. And salad, for variety.
What are your hobbies outside of work? I’ve got two wonderful kids, a four-year-old and a 10-month-old. They take up a lot of my time when I’m not working, and I enjoy every minute of it.
Emmilie Aveling: Increasing diversity and inclusion in research
The central question guiding Aveling’s research is: How can public health researchers and practitioners working to understand and solve health inequities center the voices of those most affected, rather than neglect or steamroll them?
“If you look anywhere in global public health, there are endless calls for more partnerships and better engagement of communities and residents,” Aveling said. “But how do we facilitate those efforts in a way that serves, supports, and complements the agency and work of affected communities? How can we involve them? Who is determining the agenda?”
It’s Aveling’s goal to unpack the complicated dynamics of partnership and collaboration within public health, including internationally. For example, she recently published a study outlining the development and implementation of a survey of a diverse group of long COVID patients in Brazil. “The paper was all about trying to show how a patient-engaged approach to survey design can really succeed in improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in research participation,” she said. “Very often, health surveys underrepresent people with the most disabling disease presentations and/or from lower socioeconomic groups.”
Aveling’s research interests emerged from formative experiences early in her career. Her first jobs out of college were working with adults with physical and mental disabilities, including blindness and developmental delays. Providing care to these individuals in their homes and in what her native U.K. calls “supported housing” were “some of the most important jobs I’ve ever done,” Aveling said. “I realized what a privilege it is to be in a position of providing any kind of care. And I gained insights into how rarely the voices and experiences of people with disabilities are centered in policy decisions around the services available to them.”
This was Aveling’s first glimpse into what she calls “epistemic injustice—in which people’s knowledge and ways of knowing aren’t given the recognition or legitimacy they should.” She further glimpsed this injustice working for international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in countries like Cambodia. “I saw a lot of things that didn’t seem to be working well in the international development field, but I didn’t feel very skilled or useful [to fix them],” Aveling said. Those experiences inspired her to pursue her master’s degree, during which she discovered a love of qualitative research that helped propel her toward a PhD. Her dissertation examined the quality and utility of partnerships between international NGOs, funders, community-based organizations, and local people. She continued studying international health partnerships as an investigator at the University of Leicester and the University of Cambridge.
At Harvard Chan School, Aveling brings a passion for equitable, community-engaged collaborations as well as more and better training around qualitative research, which relies on analysis of non-numerical data such as interviews and observations. She continues to teach required and elective courses on this methodology to master’s and doctoral students, including online.
She’s also a committed mentor and received a Harvard Chan School mentoring award as a research scientist in 2022. Aveling herself knows the importance of a good mentor—she credits a professor she had during her master’s studies with instilling in her the belief she could earn a PhD. “I didn’t really think I was good enough, but he believed in me,” Aveling said. “To thrive in this environment, you need to feel recognized and heard and feel like your perspective has value. I think about that a lot with my students. I try to understand where they’re coming from so I can better understand how to help them. And I try to emphasize that what matters isn’t just the deliverable, it’s the process.”
“The students here are amazing,” Aveling continued. “It’s one of the things I love about teaching: the privilege of getting to know them and all that they bring to the classroom. It’s a real joy.”
Quick hits
What is the last movie you watched? The Wild Robot, with my kids. It’s this allegorical story about family and parenting and letting go. I loved it.
What do you miss most about living in the U.K.? You can’t beat a really good British pub garden.
Photos courtesy of Ari Ne’eman and Emmilie Aveling