Team

Glorian Sorensen, PhD, MPH, is the Center’s Founding Director and Professor Emerita of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard Chan School. For many years, she directed the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Population Sciences Center for Community-based Research. Her research studies the effectiveness of theory-driven interventions targeting changes in work organizations and environments as well as in workers’ safety and health behaviors, from a systems perspective. Dr. Sorensen has designed and tested worksite interventions across a range of industries and organizations, seeking to promote the health and well-being of workers, some of whom are in high-risk, low-income positions. Her research has also tested tobacco control interventions for workers in India, in collaboration with investigators at the Healis-Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health in Mumbai.
 
Dr. Sorensen earned her BA, her MPH and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota.

Erika Sabbath, ScD, is Director of the Center, Associate Professor at the Boston College School of Social Work, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Harvard Chan School in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is a social and occupational epidemiologist studying the contribution of the work environment to population health. Since 2016, she has led the Center’s Boston Hospital Workers Health Study, a longitudinal study of employees of a large hospital system. She also co-leads the Study of OB-GYNs in Post-Roe America, a Center affiliated project exploring OB-GYNs experiences in the current policy context.

Dr. Sabbath earned her BA from Washington University in St. Louis, her MS from the Harvard Chan School, and a ScD in Epidemiology at both Harvard University and Université Paris XI-Sud. She was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

Susan E. Peters, PhD, is the Associate Director of the Center and a Research Scientist in the Harvard Chan School Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. She is the architect of the Thriving from Work framework and Thriving from Work Questionnaire, used globally to assess and strengthen the working conditions that enable workers, teams, and workplaces to thrive. Her Thriving Workers, Thriving Workplaces program of studies focuses on establishing connections between work and working conditions, worker well-being and business outcomes. This has been achieved by partnering with stakeholders across sectors to redesign work in ways that elevate people and performance to ensure both workers and organizations thrive.
 
Dr. Peters earned her BOccThy and her PhD in Health and Rehabilitation Sciences from the University of Queensland, and completed postdoctoral training in Environmental, Social, and Behavioral Health at the Harvard Chan School. She is a licensed Occupational Therapist with expertise managing a large private healthcare provider.

Lisa Burke, MSEd, is the Center Assistant Director and Outreach Co-Lead. In these roles, she manages the day-to-day operations of the Center, develops and implements strategic plans, translates research findings into practice and policy, leads the Center’s communication strategies, and oversees the dissemination of resources to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Her areas of expertise include organizational change to improve the health, safety, and well-being of workers, and work/life integration research and policy development. This has included implementing organizational level interventions, training managers, developing and evaluating programs, collecting and analyzing data, writing reports and delivering presentations. Ms. Burke was previously a Research Associate for the Work, Family & Health Study, working on a multifaceted intervention in long-term care facilities throughout New England.
 
Ms. Burke earned her MSEd in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and her BA from Williams College.

Lisa Berkman, PhD, co-leads the Center’s Fulfillment Center Intervention Study, is the Director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and is the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Epidemiology, and Social Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard Chan School. She is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist whose work focuses extensively on social and policy influences on health outcomes. Her research orients toward understanding inequalities in health related to socioeconomic status, different racial and ethnic groups, and social networks, support and isolation. Dr. Berkman leads the Study of Workplace Redesign and Worker Well-Being, as well as the Health and Aging Study in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa, which aims to study the drivers and consequences of diseases in an aging population.
 
Dr. Berkman earned her BA from Northwestern University, and her MS and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Cal Halvorsen, PhD, MSW, leads the Center’s Outreach Core, overseeing research-to-practice activities and dissemination of research findings, and the Older Workers’ Health and Well-being Study, which identifies how access to workplace benefits and policies influence health and well-being of workers aged 50 and older. He is an Associate Professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and a research affiliate at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a gerontological social work scholar whose work is at the confluence of aging societies, paid and unpaid work, and social purpose and impact. Dr. Halvorsen has expertise on self-employment, job-training programs, volunteering in later life, and intergenerational initiatives, with an interest in low-wage workers and volunteering.  
 
Dr. Halvorsen earned his BA at the University of Iowa, and his MSW and PhD in Social Work at the Washington University in St. Louis.

Erin L. Kelly, PhD, leads the Center’s Fulfillment Center Intervention Study, which focuses on workers in fulfillment centers in the e-commerce segment of the warehousing and storage industry. She is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Co-Director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research. Dr. Kelly investigates the implications of workplace policies and management practices with a focus on equity, well-being, and organizational performance. Her previous research has examined scheduling and work-family supports, family leaves, harassment policies, and diversity initiatives in a variety of organizations and industries. Her ongoing projects explore different facets of well-being and engagement in low- and moderate-wage jobs, with the goal of identifying promising practices and designing evaluation.
 
Dr. Kelly earned her BA from Rice University and her MA and PhD in sociology from Princeton University.

Gregory Wagner, MD, Chairs of the Center’s Policy Working Group and is an Adjunct Professor at the Harvard Chan School Department of Environmental Health. His career has included multiple positions at the intersection of scientific research and public health policy, including several roles at NIOSH, including serving as senior advisor to the director. His work resulted in the creation of what is now the Total Worker Health Program. Dr. Wagner is co-lead for the Center’s Thriving Workers, Thriving Workplaces program of studies, which identifies actionable workplace policies and organizational strategies that foster healthier, more resilient workforces, based on the Thriving from Work Questionnaire, used globally to assess and strengthen the conditions and work environments that enable workers, teams, and workplaces to thrive.
 
Dr. Wagner is a graduate of Harvard College and earned his medical degree at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

Maggie Woodlock, MLA, is a Research Assistant at the Center, with a focus on dissemination of research findings, translation of findings into practices and policies, and qualitative research methodologies. She contributes to the development of abstracts, proposals, and research manuscripts for papers submitted to academic journals; develops survey materials; and conducts qualitative data collection, coding, analysis, and summary development. Ms. Woodlock helps to manage the Center’s communications strategies, with both internal and external collaborators, to advance the Center’s outreach and dissemination efforts. She also makes critical contributions to the Boston Hospital Workers Health Study and the Center’s Outreach efforts, focused on research-to-practice activities and dissemination of research findings, including through the Center’s website and LinkedIn activities.
 
Ms. Woodlock earned an MLA in Anthropology through the Harvard Division of Continuing Education and a BA from the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Les Boden, PhD, is an economist and a professor in the Department of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health. Much of his research focuses on finding ways to highlight the economic and human consequences of injuries and illnesses and to identify ways of minimizing those consequences. Dr. Boden has published studies measuring the income lost by injured workers, the adequacy of workers compensation benefits, the impact of work-related injuries on mortality, the underreporting of workplace injuries, and the impact of occupational injuries on opioid use disorder and mortality from drug overdose and suicide. Since 2010, he has collaborated on studies of the health and safety of patient care workers as a Co-Investigator of the Center’s Boston Hospital Workers Health Study.
 
Dr. Boden earned his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his BA from Brandeis University.

Jack Dennerlein, PhD has served in multiple roles over his many years at the Center, including as Associate Director, leading the Outreach Core and projects in construction and healthcare, and most recently as a Senior Advisor and Collaborator. He is Dean and Professor at Boston University Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and Adjunct Professor of Ergonomics and Safety in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard Chan School. Dr. Dennerlein has spent three decades in the field of occupational safety and health, investigating worker safety, health, and well-being. These interventions include how changing the conditions of work (physical, psychosocial, and organizational) improves the safety climate and health of construction, healthcare, and transportation workers.
 
Dr. Dennerlein earned a BS from University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, his MS from MIT and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley.

Daniel A. Gundersen, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Associate Director at the Rutgers Institute for Nicotine & Tobacco Studies and Chief of the Office of Survey Methods and Data Analysis. He was previously a senior research scientist at the Harvard Chan School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Survey and Qualitative Methods Core. Dr. Gundersen is a statistician and survey methodologist whose work is focused on developing and evaluating measurement approaches for population health research. Dr. Gundersen is a Co-Investigator for the Thriving Workers, Thriving Workplaces Study, collaborating with Dr. Peters on the Thriving from Work Questionnaire design, as well as data collection, cleaning and scoring procedures. He also contributes to manuscripts and conducts quality assurance of data analyses.
 
Dr. Gundersen earned a PhD from the Rutgers School of Public Health and his BA and an MA in Survey Research from the University of Connecticut.

Dean Hashimoto, MD, JD, is the Chief Medical Officer in Occupational Health Services at Massachusetts General Brigham and an Associate Professor of Law at Boston College Law School. His scholarship focuses on the interface of law, science and medicine, especially in the areas of health care policy and the role of scientific evidence in the courtroom. At the Center, Dr. Hashimoto has been instrumental in establishing and sustaining the partnership on which the Boston Hospital Workers Health Study is based, co-leading research and analysis of multiple components of the study and dissemination of findings to inform policies and practices.
 
Dr. Hashimoto earned his AB from Stanford University, MS from the University of California, Berkeley, his MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and his JD from Yale University. He received his postgraduate medical training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health.  

Jeffrey N. Katz, MD, MS, is professor of medicine and orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School and professor of epidemiology at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. He holds the Clement B. Sledge and Thomas S. Thornhill Distinguished Chair in Orthopedic Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he also serves as Director of The Orthopedic and Arthritis Center for Outcomes Research. Dr. Katz’s research in collaboration with the Center focuses on the intersection between work and musculoskeletal health. He is a Co-Investigator on the Thriving Workers, Thriving Workplaces Study and previously contributed to other Center studies, including the Center’s ARM for Subs research study with construction workers, as well as the development of the Center’s Workplace Integrated Safety and Health Assessment.
 
Dr. Katz received his AG from Princeton University, earned an MSc from the Harvard Chan School, and his MD from Yale Medical School.

Deborah McLellan, PhD, was previously a Senior Scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), with an additional appointment at the Harvard Chan School in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Prior to that, she was a Research Scientist at DFCI’s Center for Community-Based Research. As a member of our Center’s team, she conducted research and implemented dissemination of evidence-based resources, working closely with affiliate organizations to improve worker health, safety, and well-being. She was first author of the Center’s Implementation Guidelines, published in 2017. In 2021, she became a member of the Center’s External Advisory Board.

Dr. McLellan earned her BA from Franklin & Marshall College, her MHS from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and her PhD from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Melissa McTernan, PhD, is a Senior Research Statistician at Boston College and manages the academic research statistical consulting group at Boston College Research Services. Prior to joining Boston College, she was an Assistant Professor at California State University in Sacramento. Dr. McTernan is a quantitative psychologist and an expert in methods for analyzing categorical and continuous data, linear mixed-effects modeling, methods for detecting individual differences in longitudinal data, and measurement. At the Center, Dr. McTernan is a Co-Investigator and the biostatistician for the Boston Hospital Workers Health Study and the Older Workers’ Health and Well-being Study. She is responsible for finalizing data analysis plans, conducting statistical analysis, and interpreting research findings for manuscripts, as well as co-authoring publications.  
 
Dr. McTernan earned her BS from University of Mary Washington and her PhD in Quantitative Psychology from the University of California, Davis.

Eve Nagler, ScD, is a Senior Scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Research Associate in the Harvard Chan School Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. Her research focuses on designing, testing and implementing theory-driven interventions that are responsive to the social and work context in which health behaviors occur, while optimizing available resources. She published a step-by-step approach to intervention development based on the Social Contextual Model of Health Behavior Change, which can be used by practitioners to develop programs that are responsive to worker’s daily lives. For 10 years, Dr. Nagler has led intervention development efforts as a co-investigator on studies in the US and India.
 
Dr. Nagler earned her BS from Georgetown University, her MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her ScD from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

Cassandra Okechukwu, ScD, MSN, MPH, is the Director of Research at the Weitzman Institute. She is a nurse executive with more than 20 years of experience in academia, government consulting, and the health care industry. Her work is grounded in a deep understanding of health systems and a sustained commitment to advancing evidence-informed impact. In addition to contributing to our Center’s research studies and serving as a member of our External Advisory Board, Dr. Okechukwu has held various roles at the Harvard Chan School, where she currently serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor. 

Dr. Okechukwu earned her BSN from the University of Maryland School of Nursing, her MSN and MPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and Bloomberg School of Public Health, respectively, and her ScD from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

Nico Pronk, PhD, is President of the HealthPartners Institute and Chief Science Officer at HealthPartners, Inc. in Minnesota. For many years, he was also a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard Chan School. Dr. Pronk’s work is focused on connecting evidence of effectiveness with practical applications of programs and practices, policies and systems that measurably improve population health and well-being at the research, practice and policy levels. Dr. Pronk has collaborated with the Center for many years, co-leading a Harvard course on Total Worker Health approaches, leading research-to-practice Center collaborations, and advising the Center’s leadership on research, publications, and resources.   
 
Dr. Pronk earned his BS from Davis & Elkins College, his MA from Kearney State College, and his PhD in exercise physiology at Texas A&M University. He was a post-doctoral fellow in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

James L. Ritchie-Dunham, PhD, is a Department Associate at the Harvard Chan School in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department, and a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches strategy and consulting change management. He is the president of the Institute for Strategic Clarity, with a focus on the intersection of decision sciences, well-being measurement, and strategic organizational leadership. The strategic systems-change frameworks and implementation processes he has developed have guided many initiatives, and he has authored many publications on abundance-based agreements, human flourishing, and strategic clarity. Dr. Ritchie-Dunham collaborates with Dr. Peters on the Center’s Thriving Workers, Thriving Workplaces Study.
 
Dr. Ritchie-Dunham received his BSPE from the University of Tulsa and his PhD in decision sciences from UT Austin, and completed postdocs at MIT in organizational studies and system dynamics and at Harvard in psychology.

Emily Sparer-Fine, PhD, is the Director of the Occupational Health Surveillance Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. While a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Research Associate at the Harvard Chan School, Dr. Sparer-Fine led several Center research studies of the air quality and chronic low-level exposures in fire stations. In partnership with the Boston Fire Department, she conducted a novel exposure assessment of cancer risk factors – like diesel exhaust – at fire stations. This work was in response to concerns expressed that firefighters are being diagnosed with, and dying from, cancer at higher than normal rates. Since 2021, Dr. Sparer-Fine has been a member of the Center’s External Advisory Board.
 
Dr. Sparer-Fine earned her BA from Barnard College, and her MS and ScD from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. 
 

Beth Stelson PhD, MPH, MSW, is an Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Public Health. She is a social epidemiologist whose research examines how working conditions and occupational context effects the health and well-being of low and middle-income helping professionals, such as addiction treatment providers and hospital workers. She was the principal investigator of a NIDA-funded study to develop the Vicarious Occupational Trauma Exposure (VOTE) Index, a tool to identify occupational sources of vicarious trauma that could be modified in health and social service work environments.  
 
Dr. Stelson earned her BA from Brown University, her MPH and MSW from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and School of Social Policy & Practice, respectively, and her PhD from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.  

Jessica Williams, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Health Policy and Administration at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research agenda assesses how organizational policies impact workers’ health and injury rates, and how different levels of prevention can ameliorate or exacerbate health disparities. She employs conceptual models from a host of disciplines, including social epidemiology, health services, economics, and occupational health psychology. Using econometric methods, she provide empirically rigorous answers to how organizational policies in workplaces and communities can alter the social determinants of health. Dr. Williams was the PI of the Center’s study of low wage workers in nursing homes Low-Wage Workers in Nursing Homes (2017-2021).
 
Dr. Williams earned her BA from Stanford University, her MA in Economics from the University of Michigan, and her PhD from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.