Karen Emmons, PhD is a Professor of Social and Behavioral Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and is interim co-chair of the Social and Behavioral Sciences department. She is a behavioral scientist with a record of funded research in community-based approaches to cancer prevention in a variety of settings that serve under-resourced communities, including low income housing and community health centers. Her work targets a range of cancer risk factors, including nutrition, physical activity, sun exposure, tobacco and second-hand smoke exposure, and cancer screening. Her research teams have included interdisciplinary perspectives on cancer risk reduction and health disparities, with a focus on multiple cancer risk behaviors.

Dr. Emmons is a past recipient of a mid-career K award focused on dissemination and implementation research to reduce cancer disparities. She currently serves as the Faculty Director of the Community Engagement Program for Harvard’s Clinical Translational Science Award. Dr. Emmons is Past-President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dr. Emmons was the Co-Principal Investigator of ISCCCE. Now she is MPI of Mass-ACCERT, and an investigator on its Community Gateway to Health Study. Dr. Emmons also serves as an investigator for MCPCRN overseeing research on tobacco cessation within community health centers.

Cheryl Clark, MD, ScD, is Executive Director and Senior Vice President of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Center’s Institute for Health Equity Research, Evaluation, and Policy (IHE). She is a physician of hospital medicine and a social epidemiologist with health equity research expertise in SDOH as drivers of health care utilization in diverse populations. Dr. Clark served as co-Chair of the national task force that developed the All of Us Social Determinants of Health survey and is a member of the NIH PhenX Steering Committee that oversees survey measurement standards for social and behavioral measures in genomic studies. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. 

Dr. Clark is MPI for the Mass-ACCERT Administrative Core and co-leads the Research Measures, Methods, and Data Management (RMMDM) Core.

Bekka Lee, ScD is a Lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Bekka is also the Director of the Community Engagement Program at Harvard Catalyst providing capacity building on mixed methods, implementation science, and community-engaged research to faculty, staff, students, and community partners. Her research focuses on designing and evaluating community-based interventions that translate into real world policy and environmental change, focusing in particular on investigating the contextual factors that impact effective implementation and promote health equity. She has spent 20 years working at the Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity, where she conducts research and evaluation with partners at the Boston Public Health Commission, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, and YMCA. Bekka teaches courses in program planning and evaluation and co-directs the Leaders in Health community training program at the Harvard Chan School. 

For ISCCCE, Bekka served as co-director of the Administrative Core and led pilot studies on evidence-based cancer prevention interventions in community health centers across Massachusetts. She is now co-lead for the Community Gateway to Health Study as part of Mass-ACCERT and co-led the Center’s first Community Responsive Pilot. She also serves as a Principal Investigator for MCPCRN overseeing research on tobacco cessation within community health centers.

Susan Dargon-Hart is the Senior Vice President of Clinical Health Affairs at the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. Ms. Dargon-Hart oversees the agency’s clinical health affairs department, managing innovative clinical collaborations that target health equality and improve patient health; offers resources and continuous support and training for quality improvement. For over 25 years she has been deeply committed to addressing substance use, mental health, trauma, and healthcare related issues in communities around Massachusetts. 

Susan led the Practice Surveillance Unit of ISCCCE which worked closely with the CHCs to monitor ongoing implementation activities and their impact on disparities, track outcomes of the rapid-cycle pilot projects and inform the development of new pilot projects. She also served as an MPI of the COVID-19 testing grant, RADX-UP. Susan is co-leading the Community Responsive Projects for Mass-ACCERT. She also provides consultation to the MCPCRN team on research outreach, engagement, and processes. 

Shoba Ramanadhan, ScD, MPH is a behavioral scientist with expertise in implementation science, cancer disparities, and community-based participatory research. Her research supports community-based organizations, like YMCAs, to leverage the best available research- and practice-based evidence to address cancer and other health disparities in the US and India. She seeks to reimagine capacity-building for community-based service delivery by centering practice-based expertise and integrating long-term goals of community health and social change. She also studies opportunities to leverage staff social networks to support program implementation. Dr. Ramanadhan uses community-engaged research approaches, routinely working in partnership with health-focused coalitions and local nonprofits, particularly those serving racial and ethnic minority populations and LGBTQ+ communities.

Dr. Ramanadhan led Capacity Building for ISCCCE (as an investigator in the Methods Unit) and is now leading the Capacity Building team for Mass-ACCERT (as a Co-Investigator in the Administrative Core).

Leslie Salas Karnes is the Director of Quality Improvement in Clinical Health Affairs at the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. She works closely with staff and clinicians from community health centers throughout the state of Massachusetts to improve healthcare quality and delivery and reduce health inequity. Leslie is responsible for planning, overseeing and leading technical assistance projects and programs that support health center clinical and operational improvements. She works collaboratively with other staff in the Clinical Division, other League divisions, funders, and other healthcare partners. Prior to joining the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, she worked at the Boston Public Health Commission as Director of the Education and Community Engagement Division in the Infectious Disease Bureau where she provided programmatic direction and management of the Ryan White Boston EMA Planning Council support program, Medical Case Management Training and Building Capacity program, and the Education and Outreach program. Leslie is a co-Investigator on the Mass-ACCERT Community Gateway to Health study, working on the systems-level intervention, and served as a co-lead for the initial Community Responsive Project, “Using Community Advisory Boards to Build and Sustain CHC-Community Connections.”  She was on the Evaluation team for ISCCCE. 

Cristina Huebner Torres, PhD, MA is Caring Community Health Center’s Chief Executive Vice President, Strategy and Research Officer. As a Latina social epidemiologist and community healthcare executive, her work informs sustainable, culturally and linguistically appropriate improvements to achieve health equity. She has expertise in mixed methods and implementation science partnerships, previously working with Dr. Rebekka Lee and Dr. Karen Emmons and the Oregon Community Health Informatics Network (OCHIN). She developed Caring CHC’s research and population health department and leads substantial CHC-led research. Her research focuses on community responsive approaches to health inequities, including social needs and digital literacy, and access. 

Dr. Huebner Torres is co-leading the Mass-ACCERT Gateway to Health Study, overseeing the study’s design and implementation. 

Nima Hejazi is an assistant professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research interests span causal inference, causal and statistical machine learning, assumption-lean inference, and computational statistics, and his methodological work is strongly motivated by his collaborative applied science research in the infectious disease sciences; the epidemiology of chronic diseases, cancer, and substance use disorders; and implementation science. He is also interested in how open-source software practices can promote reproducibility and transparency in statistical science.
 
Dr. Hejazi is co-leading the Research Methods, Measures and Data Management (RMMDM) core of Mass-ACCERT and coordinates data analysis support for the overall Data Ecosystem.  

Elsie M. Taveras, MD, MPH is the inaugural Chief Community Health and Health Equity Officer at Mass General Brigham and Executive Director of the Kraft Center for Community Health at Massachusetts General Brigham. She leads system-wide strategies to improve health equity and the health of the communities served by Mass General Brigham. She is a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Conrad Taff Professor of Pediatrics in the Field of Nutrition at Harvard Medical School, and a Professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Taveras was a Co-Principal Investigator for ISCCCE, leading the team with Karen Emmons. She is now co-leading the Community Responsive Projects (CRP) Program of Mass-ACCERT.