Karen Emmons is a Professor of Social and Behavioral Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has expertise in cancer equity and in implementation science.  Her work focuses on community-engaged approaches to implementation of cancer prevention interventions in settings that serve historically disadvantaged communities. She has more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and has served as PI for multiple NIH-funded research projects and centers.  She also serves as Faculty Director of the Community Engagement Program for Harvard’s Clinical Translational Science Award, Harvard Catalyst, which focuses on advancing evidence-based strategies to improve community health and creating bi-directional relationships between community partners and researchers. She serves as the MPI of Harvard Chan’s T32 training grant in cancer prevention and control and has received multiple mentoring awards.  Her research has also been recognized by honors including the Morse Distinguished Researcher Award, Outstanding Senior Cancer Scientist Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and Outstanding Scientist Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine. She is Past-President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board, and a member of the Community Preventive Services Task Force.

Elsie M. Taveras is Chief of the Division of General Academic Pediatrics and Executive Director of the Kraft Center for Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is also Conrad Taff Professor of Pediatrics in the Field of Nutrition at Harvard Medical School and Professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Taveras is a Pediatrician, clinical epidemiologist, and a childhood obesity researcher. Her main focus of research is understanding determinants of obesity in women and children and developing interventions across the lifecourse to prevent obesity and chronic diseases, especially in underserved populations. Her work spans the spectrum of observational studies and interventions—to identify and quantify risk factors— and to modify these risk factors for health promotion and disease prevention. She has published over 200 research studies and has received continuous research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the American Diabetes Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Boston Foundation, among many other federal and foundation sources. Elsie is a Co-Principal Investigator and leads the ISCCCE team with Karen Emmons.

Susan Dargon-Hart is the VP 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 leads the Practice Surveillance Unit of ISCCCE which will work 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 future pilot projects.