Brown Bag Seminar: The Front Line Indigenous Partnership Program: Addressing Indigenous health care disparities and support for AIAN pathway programs
Valerie Dobiesz, MD, MPH, is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and emergency physician practicing clinically at Brigham Women’s Hospital, Tsehootsooi Medical Center, and Sage Memorial Hospital on the Navajo Nation. Her current academic responsibilities include directing the Front Line Indigenous Partnership (FLIP) Program based in the Mass General Brigham Department of Emergency Medicine Office of IDEaS (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice) and serving as core faculty at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative leading the Program on Indigenous Health Disparities.
Dr. Dobiesz is the director of the FLIP Program with a mission to improve American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) health and eliminate existing health disparities through educational, clinical, and administrative partnerships and the development of healthcare career pathway programs. In this capacity, she works clinically and oversees BWH emergency physicians that work at Tribally managed hospitals in the Navajo Nation to increase the clinical capacity and quality of care provided in this rural and historically underserved health care context.
Her research and scholarship have focused on eliminating health disparities for AIAIN populations, developing the AIAN healthcare workforce, simulation medical education, maintaining medical education during war, and improving maternal health in emergency and low resource settings. She currently leads and collaborates on multiple projects focused on mitigating AIAN health disparities such as creating an academic medical center partnership with a Tribally managed hospital as an innovative mutually beneficial healthcare delivery model and studying the impact of healthcare career pathway programs for Native students.
Speaker Information
Valerie Dobiesz
Organizers
Special Book Launch Event for “Inherited Inequality” by Christina Cross
Christina Cross, a former postdoctoral fellow and current faculty member, has authored the newly published book “Inherited Inequality: Why Opportunity Gaps Persist between Black and White Youth Raised in Two-Parent Families.”
Please join us at Harvard Pop Center for a conversation between Lawrence Bobo, W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University, and author Christina Cross, followed by a reception. (The discussion will also be accessible via Zoom). Limited quantities of the book will be available for purchase (cash only) at a reduced price of $15.00.
Speaker Information
Lawrence Bobo
Christina Cross
Organizers
Know our rights: Legal updates for immigrant health
Event description
Join the Leah Zallman Center for Immigrant Health Research (LZC), François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, the Health & Law Immigrant Solidarity Network (HLISN), and Massachusetts healthcare partners for a virtual update on immigration law and policy from panelists Susan Church, Chief Operating Officer & Legal Advisor at MA Office for Refugees and Immigrants (ORI); and Heather Yountz, Senior Immigration Staff Attorney at Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.
Healthcare leaders, providers, workers, public health professionals, and members of the public encouraged to attend. Speaker remarks are based on their own scholarship and experience. As such, they speak for themselves, not for Harvard University.
Speaker Information
Susan Church
Heather Yountz
Organizers
Innovations in immigrant mental health
Join us for a conversation with colleagues from the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee and the Somerville Public Library to learn about innovative ways in which community-based programs and services are addressing the mental health and wellbeing of immigrants. The Partnerships for Community Mental Health and Immigrant Well-being initiative is cohosted by the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Office of Field Education and Practice. This project aims to examine the mental healthcare landscape in Massachusetts and learn from immigrant-led, culturally rooted, community-based approaches to mental health.
Additional details:
Main talk from 1:00pm-1:50pm EDT at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Kresge 200 (677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115). The conversation will continue at the Jonathan M. Mann Conference Room (FXB Building, 7th Floor, 651 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA).
Moderator: Margaret (Maggie) Sullivan, FNP-BC, DrPH, FAAN
Margaret (Maggie) Sullivan is an Instructor and Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Program on Immigrants and Unhoused Communities, a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academies of Practice (NAP) in Nursing, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN). She is a nationally board-certified family nurse practitioner dedicated to serving immigrant communities, especially those with precarious documentation status or at risk of homelessness. Maggie co-leads the Partnership for Community Mental Health and Immigrant Well-being with her colleague, Jocelyn Chu, a project which aims to examine the mental healthcare landscape in Massachusetts and learn from immigrant-led, culturally rooted, community-based approaches to mental health. She co-advises the Harvard Students Human Rights Collaborative (HSHRC) and conducts forensic medical evaluations for asylum with Harvard Medical School’s Asylum Clinic. In collaboration with the Initiative on Health & Homelessness, Maggie co-developed and co-teaches HPM 523: Homelessness and Health: Lessons from Health Care, Public Health, and Research. Since 2009, Maggie has practiced at Boston Health Care for the Homeless (BHCHP), providing primary care to immigrant and limited English proficient (LEP) patients in shelter-based clinics. In March of 2019 she launched Oasis, an immigrant health clinic at BHCHP where immigrants experiencing homelessness are connected with interdisciplinary and multilingual health services. Maggie also works as a clinical consultant with the Massachusetts League of Community Health Center’s farmworker health program. Between 2010-2017, she collaborated with Partners In Health in Chiapas, Mexico and Guatemala.
Speakers:
Rachel Plummer is the Associate Director at Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC), Cambridge’s anti-poverty nonprofit. Rachel has been working at CEOC for 4 years. She began as a graduate student intern at CEOC during her Master of Public Health program at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Before working at CEOC, she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital in clinical research related to addiction medicine. Rachel’s current position at CEOC touches all of CEOC’s program areas with a particular focus on food insecurity and mental health. She leads the agency’s community-based mental health program, where non-clinicians deliver a 5-session mental health intervention. Rachel is deeply committed to hearing and centering the voices of community members and incorporating those voices in programmatic and policy decision making.
Jake Savage, is the Library Social Worker at Somerville Public Library. A Somerville resident with a background in immigrant and refugee health, he is passionate about increasing equity in the community through advocacy, programming, and access to resources and information. He also loves to read, hike, and solve crossword puzzles!
This event is co-sponsored by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Field Education and Practice Office.
Speaker remarks are based on their own scholarship and experience. As such, they speak for themselves, not for Harvard University.
Organizers
Information Sick: The Decline of Journalism, the Rise in Misinformation, and the Nation’s Health
Award-winning journalist Joanne Kenen is the lead author of a new book on the information environment in the United States. She’ll be joined by one of her co-authors, Johns Hopkins Professor Joshua Sharfstein.
A former city, state, and federal public health official, Dr. Sharfstein has experienced and studied the consequences of these challenges for health. They’ll lead a discussion about how we got here —and what comes next.
Join us in person at Ariadne Labs or virtually!
Speaker Information
Joanne Kenen
Joshua Sharfstein
Organizers
2025 – 2026 Takemi Fellows Meet and Greet
We invite you to meet the 2025-2026 Takemi Fellows in the Department of Global Health and Population! Learn about their research, hear their experiences, and enjoy food and refreshments.
Organizers
Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar: “Revisiting theories of marital instability in the era of gray divorce: The case of retirement”
Shiro Furuya, PhD, David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presents “Revisiting theories of marital instability in the era of gray divorce: The case of retirement.”
The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.
Please note, you will need an HUID or visitor’s pass for access to this event.
Speaker Information
Shiro Furuya, PhD
Organizers
Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar: “State data and the production of quantitative knowledge: The case of police stops in the United States and France”
Michael Zanger-Tishler, PhD candidate in Sociology & Social Policy, Harvard University, and graduate student affiliate, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presents “State data and the production of quantitative knowledge: The case of police stops in the United States and France.”
The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.
Speaker Information
Michael Zanger-Tishler, PhD
Organizers
Arbovirus dynamics in a changing world
Title Talk
Arbovirus dynamics in a changing world
THIS SPEAKER WILL BE IN PERSON IN FXB 301.
The event will be hybrid.
Speaker Information
The past decade has seen the global expansion of chikungunya and Zika viruses as well as the largest dengue epidemics ever reported. The talk will address some of the key of this increase, analytical tools to assess risk, and key questions to better understand future dynamics and long-term control strategies.
Brown Bag Seminar: Advancing global mental health delivery: The role of digital innovation, task sharing, and reciprocal learning
Mental disorders are a leading cause of disability worldwide, yet in most countries, individuals living with mental disorders are more likely to have access to a mobile phone than basic mental health care. As digital technologies have fundamentally changed the way we interact with each other and with the world around us, there are new opportunities to leverage these devices for addressing the significant barriers to implementing and extending the reach of mental health services, and ultimately towards improving outcomes for those facing the challenges of mental illness. In this presentation, John Naslund will draw from his field research in both India and in the United States to illustrate how emerging digital technologies can advance task sharing and early intervention in both lower and higher income settings. Importantly, this involves shifting from ‘digital promise’ to ‘digital practice’, and realizing the impact of digital innovations in advancing mental health care delivery in real-world settings. Naslund will discuss the potential challenges and hurdles ahead and consider emerging innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) to advance implementation science and strengthen capacity of health systems, empower community providers, and combat stigma towards bridging the global mental health care gap.
John Naslund is co-director of the Mental Health For All Lab at Harvard Medical School, and faculty in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. He holds expertise in psychiatric epidemiology, implementation science, and digital mental health. Naslund’s scholarship seeks to advance efforts aimed at improving the lives of individuals facing the challenges of mental illness worldwide. His work focuses on low-resource settings in India and the U.S., using digital innovations to train frontline providers, support recovery in people with severe mental illness, and promote peer-to-peer support and mental health advocacy. Naslund’s work is supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the Harvard Global Health Institute Burke Fellowship, Grand Challenges Canada, the H.E. Butt Foundation, the Tepper Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust. Naslund has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and is an Honorary Research Fellow with Sangath, a world-leading NGO and research organization based in India. He has a longstanding track record advocating for the rights, dignity, and quality of healthcare for those living with mental illness.