Clinician/Teacher Award RecipientsPhysician/Scientist Award Recipients

The 2024 application cycle is now closed.

These awards increase opportunities for underrepresented faculty who are committed to diversity, inclusion and equity, to advance to senior positions in academic medicine and leadership.

The two awards categories are the Physician/Scientist Development Award (PSDA) and the Clinician/Teacher Development Award (CTDA). Each award provides funding over three or four years and is designed for Mass General-appointed faculty pursuing different career goals. 

The Clinician/Teacher Development Award (CTDA) provides funding support for a clinical, educational or community project to a faculty member (junior and mid-career), fellow, or graduating resident pursuing an academic career as a clinician, teacher, administrative or community leader at Mass General. This award offers a total of $120,000 in grant and loan repayment support plus 20% indirect costs to be spent over a four-year period. Up to two awards are given.

The Physician/Scientist Development Award (PSDA) provides transitional grant funding which will aid the applicant in becoming an independent investigator at MGH. $180,000 plus 20% indirect costs will be awarded to be spent over a three or four-year period, with a maximum of  $60,000 plus indirect costs per year for three-year awards and a maximum of $45,000 plus indirect costs per year for four-year awards. Up to six awards are given.

The CDI Faculty Development Award Consultation Service  is designed to help applicants develop a strong application for the Physician/Scientist and the Clinician-Teacher Development Awards. Through this service, you can speak with a previous award winner for advice on your application, including your research plan, personal statement, and letters. To request a consultation, please complete this survey.

For answers to frequently asked questions, please view PSDA FAQs and CTDA FAQs (PDF).

2024 Clinician-Teacher Development Award Recipients

Ada Amobi MD MPH
Clinical Equity Director, Division of Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Amobi is the Clinical Equity Director for the Division of Internal Medicine, an attending in the Albright Medical Service, and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Amobi has a wide breadth of knowledge and expertise in health equity. In her prior role as the Physician Lead of the Health Equity Institute at the Rhode Island Department of Health, she served as the department lead on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services and advanced language access support in state clinical settings. Dr. Amobi led the health department’s efforts at improving internal competency in equity principles and advancing equity across various department programs.

Her academic interests include improving care of patients with limited English proficiency, addressing health disparities, and using community-led interventions to improve population health. She is a member of the Mass Medical Society’s Committee on Public Health and Chair of the society’s Committee on Violence Intervention and Prevention.

Dr. Amobi completed her medical training at Harvard Medical School and Master’s in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at MGH where she received the Allan F. Moore Memorial Award for Community Service.

Abstract: Implementing a Data-Informed Curriculum to Improve Care of Patients with Limited English Proficiency.

Effective communication is a foundational pillar of high-quality clinical care. In the United States, patients who do not speak English fluently are at risk of worse health outcomes due to miscommunication with their medical team. This risk can be mitigated through consistent use of certified interpreters and bilingual staff who have been certified as fluent in additional languages. This project seeks to improve staff skills around the use of interpreters and to increase the number of bilingual staff that complete qualified bilingual status within the Division of General Internal Medicine. This goal will be reached through first conducting research on current language access practices in the division and analyzing patient experience feedback from patients who do not speak English fluently. This data will then be used to develop, pilot, and further refine a training session and resource packet for division staff. Training will include best practices for commonly encountered challenges in the care of patients with LEP and guidance for bilingual staff to pursue qualified bilingual certifications as part of the training curriculum.

Carine Davila, MD, MPH
Equity Director, Division of Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine
Center for Aging and Serious Illness, Mongan Institute
Assistant in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Davila is a palliative care physician who is passionate about improving access and quality palliative care for historically marginalized populations and particularly for Latino Spanish-speaking patients. She serves as the Equity Director for the division and the Assistant Director of Equity for the MGH Continuum Project. She co-created the palliative care integrated health equity curriculum and co-leads Mass General Brigham’s United Against Racism efforts to reduce disparities in serious illness communication for marginalized communities.

Dr. Davila completed undergraduate studies in public policy at Princeton and received her medical degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and fellowship at the Harvard Interprofessional Palliative Care Fellowship. After clinical training, Dr. Davila was selected as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow in Minority Health Policy at Harvard University and pursued her MPH from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.

Abstract: Developing an Evidence-Based Behavioral Change Intervention to Improve Serious Illness Communication for Latino Spanish-speaking Patients and Caregivers

People living with serious illness encounter communication challenges, compounded for people with limited English proficiency, with clinicians that lead to emotional distress and lower quality care. Serious illness communication (SIC) is a key element of high-quality palliative care but is less likely to occur with Latino Spanish-speaking individuals, a population that faces multiple barriers to equitable care. One in five U.S. residents identify as Latino, two-thirds who speak Spanish at home. The Latino population accounted for 52% of population growth in the last 10 years. There is a critical need to develop culturally tailored serious illness communication strategies for this growing population.

I will characterize the barriers and facilitators to clinicians engaging seriously ill Spanish-speaking patients and caregivers in SIC, including qualitative interviews with language-concordant and language-discordant palliative care clinicians and primary team clinicians caring for seriously ill Spanish-speaking patients. I will use these findings, together with perspectives of patients, caregivers, and medical interpreters (in separately funded effort), to develop and refine a behavioral change intervention for clinicians to better meet the needs of Latino Spanish-speaking patients. Finally, I will conduct an open pilot with a small number of Spanish-speaking patients and caregivers who engage in SIC with intervention-trained clinicians.

See list of prior CTDA recipients >

2024 Physician/Scientist Development Award Recipients

Kemar Joseph Brown, MD
Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology
Advanced Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Brown is an advanced heart failure cardiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an Instructor in Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. He received his medical degree from the Stony Brook University School of Medicine and completed his residency training at the Mount Sinai Hospital. He completed his general cardiology fellowship and subspecialty training in advanced heart failure and cardiac transplantation at MGH. Dr. Brown’s research focuses on using the human cardiac transcriptome to study differences in gene expression in healthy and diseased myocardium. He has a particular interest in the intersection of genetic ancestry and cardiovascular disease risk prediction. He has served on multiple committees for the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC) as well as the American College of Cardiology (ACC) Heart Failure and Transplant Leadership Section. His work has received support through the John S. LaDue Memorial Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, the American College of Cardiology, the Association of Black Cardiologists, Bristol Myers Squibb, and the MGH Executive Committee on Community Health.

Abstact: Uncovering gene differences in the healthy heart based on continental ancestry

Heart failure (HF) is a highly comorbid syndrome that afflicts more than 6.7 million adults in America and about 60 million worldwide. A critical trend has now emerged highlighting an increase in heart failure incidence, prevalence, hospitalization, and death among Black men and women in the US. On top of social risks, there are complex genetic and epigenetic factors that influence the development and progression of heart disease. Serious underrepresentation of genetic data from non-European ancestry makes it difficult to generalize discoveries and leads to an inadequate understanding of genetic diversity. Lack of representation in genetics and genomics research poses critical scientific and moral dilemmas and has significant implications on the perpetuation of disparities. While race is a fallible proxy for biology, genetic ancestry can be leveraged to better investigate patterns of gene expression that increase susceptibility to or protect against cardiovascular disease (CVD).

These investigations represent the first of its kind to use single nuclear sequencing to perform an ancestry-based comparative analysis of the human cardiac transcriptome. Here, I use healthy donor heart tissue to study the cellular composition, gene expression, and niche-specific cellular communication within African and European individuals. I hypothesize that compositional and transcriptional differences impact response to myocardial stress, and additively, influence response to treatment. I anticipate that my findings may add to our fundamental understanding of CVD risk, allow for better stratification and surveillance of patient groups, and ultimately lead to the development of more precise therapies for patients living with heart failure.

Ivan Coto Hernandez, P.h.D.
Department of Radiology
Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
Instructor in Radiology, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Coto Hernandez is a junior faculty (Instructor) in the Department of Radiology and in the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. He is interested in the development of super-resolution microscopy techniques for studying intracellular trafficking of adeno-associated viral vector particles within neurons and Schwann cells in live mouse models. His research interest is funded by a career development award (K25) from the National Institutes of Health. He is also dedicating time to develop label-free imaging techniques of peripheral nerve. Dr. Coto Hernandez holds a Ph.D. in Nanoscience from the Italian Institute of Technology and the University of Genoa, Italy. Before joining the Martinos Center at MGH, he was an Instructor in Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery in the Surgical Photonics and Engineering Laboratory at Mass. Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School (2019-2023).

Abstract

Gene delivery using adeno-associated virus vectors has tremendous potential as treatment for congenital and acquired diseases of the nervous system. Understanding viral vector cellular transduction, crucial for optimizing drug design, has been hindered by the challenge of resolving nanoscale viral particles in living organisms. There is a critical need to develop imaging techniques that enable nanoscale imaging of thick tissues and living systems. Super-resolution microscopy provides a powerful tool for imaging fluorescent nanoscale targets in the nervous system. Heretofore, wide dissemination of these techniques has been hampered by the cost and demand of high laser power. In this proposal, we plan to develop an efficient Switching Laser Mode microscopy system to study viral vector gene delivery within cells of the murine nervous system. In Aim 1, an efficient super-resolution confocal microscope will be developed to study in vitro single virion trafficking in neuronal cells. In Aim 2, an efficient high-resolution multiphoton microscope will be developed to quantify transduction efficiency in the murine brain. If successful, this work carries potential to advance our understanding of viral vector trafficking by overcoming the delivery quantification limitation in this complex process, while demonstrating the potential of super-resolution microscopy to advance knowledge discovery in biomedicine.

Jacqueline Maya, MD
Department of Pediatrics
Division of Pediatric Endocrine
Instructor in Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Maya is a junior faculty (Instructor) in the Pediatric Endocrine Division and the Department of Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Her research focuses on risk factors that contribute to the development of childhood obesity and diabetes to work towards interventions that decrease the risk of developing diabetes and other long term cardiometabolic complications over the life course. Her current primary focus is examining pregnancy and postnatal outcomes related to pre-pregnancy weight loss including use of glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor analogues. Through her work, she hopes to advance understanding of the environment of the developing fetus to design effective interventions to prevent exposure to risk factors that make some children more vulnerable to weight gain and obesity. Her professional goals have been molded by her experiences as a medical student in Colombia, a pediatric resident in Queens, New York and a pediatric endocrine fellow in Boston, Massachusetts.

Abstract: Pregnancy and Postnatal Outcomes in Women with Obesity on Glucagon-Like Peptide 1 Receptor Analogues During the Periconceptional Period

The growing prevalence of obesity in women of childbearing age and associated complications are dramatically increasing. Glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor analogues (GLP-1 RAs) are a promising pharmacotherapeutic option for treatment of diabetes and obesity. In pregnancy, GLP-1 RAs are contraindicated based on animal toxicity. However, there is limited clinical guidance on the preconception use of GLP-1 RAs and pregnancy and postnatal outcomes. Rapid rebound weight gain occurs in non-pregnant individuals after stopping these agents. It is possible that discontinuing a GLP-1 RA shortly before pregnancy could lead to greater gestational weight gain and postnatal weight retention. Greater gestational weight gain is associated with postpartum weight retention and higher birth and childhood weights thus negating the potential long-term benefits of using these medications in the preconception period.

This proposal will use data from pregnant individuals with obesity in a large health system with robust infrastructure for electronic health record-based research to investigate the association between pre-pregnancy exposure to GLP-1 RA with pregnancy and postnatal outcomes. A complementary pilot study will gather prospective data to measure appetite and diet-related outcomes as well as adiposity in the postnatal period. Aim 1 will address pregnancy outcomes in women treated prior to conception with GLP1-RA. Aim 2 will address postpartum maternal outcomes. Aim 3 will address postnatal outcomes in the children born to mothers with GLP-1RA exposure pre-pregnancy.

Aderonke Pederson, MD
Depression Clinical and Research Program, Department of Psychiatry
Massachusetts General Hospital
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Aderonke Pederson is a Psychiatrist in the Depression Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Pederson completed medical school and residency, including serving as elected Chief Resident in Psychiatry at Northwestern University. Dr. Pederson is the director of research equity for the Clinical Trials Network and Institute at MGH. She is also a vice chair for the Massachusetts General Brigham’s Institutional Review Board. She has conducted research locally and globally on health disparities. She has been awarded grants through NIH including an NIMH Career Development Award (K23) and received several honors including the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology New Investigator Award. Her research is centered on alleviating health disparities for underserved and vulnerable populations. She conducts research in collaboration with community based organizations on the development of health models that address medical mistrust and promote early engagement in mental health services. Dr. Pederson is building a mobile mental health application platform that uses firsthand lived experience narratives to address mental illness stigma from the perspectives of Black adults (including African immigrants, Black Americans, Afro-Latina/o/x and Afro-Caribbean immigrants).

Abstract: Design and Feasibility of a Mobile Mental Health Stigma Reducing Intervention towards Optimization of Care for Black Adults with Depression and Anxiety

Major depressive and anxiety disorders affects millions of adults in the U.S.. These disorders are often stigmatized. Stigma refers to negative attitudes or beliefs about mental illness, or negative behaviors directed toward persons with mental illness. Stigma is a fundamental cause of health inequities. The efficacy and precision of anti-stigma interventions to improve mental health outcomes among underserved Black adults are grossly limited and represent a critical public health gap. The aim of the award is to build a video library of Black adult narratives and integrate the narratives into a novel mobile mental health application that uses contact principles to reduce mental illness stigma and address medical mistrust. We aim to build a video library of Black adults living with mental illness sharing narratives on diagnosis, treatment and recovery. We will invite Black people from diverse backgrounds (across gender, ethnicity, and religion) who screen positive for mild, moderate, and severe depression and anxiety and who are in routine mental health care. We will also assess the feasibility and acceptability, and test the preliminary efficacy, of a self-administered, video-based mobile app in reducing mental illness stigma among Black adults with moderate to severe depression or anxiety.

Liliana Ramirez Gomez, MD
Clinical Director Memory Disorders Division
Department of Neurology, MGH
Instructor, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Ramirez Gomez is the clinical director of the Memory Disorders Division at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Instructor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ramirez Gomez completed medical school at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, and her neurology residency at the University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine. After residency, Dr. Ramirez Gomez completed a Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology fellowship at the Memory and Aging Center at USC. At MGH, Dr. Ramirez Gomez created a comprehensive neurology clinic focused on providing culturally sensitive care for Spanish-speaking patients. Dr. Ramirez Gomez is part of the Multicultural Alzheimer’s Prevention Program (MAPP) faculty at MGH and the Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (MADRC). Her research goals are to identify preclinical biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and related dementias (AD/ADRD) and find ways to better assist underserved Spanish-language people with dementia, including patients and their caregivers. Dr. Ramirez Gomez received the Norman Geschwind Award in behavioral neurology from the American Academy of Neurology in 2023 for her outstanding achievements in behavioral neurology research and her work with marginalized and underrepresented communities.

Abstract: The Spanish Resiliency and Cognition-engagement (SPARC-e) program to improve the health of underserved, Latino, family dementia caregivers

Latinos have a 1.5x increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias relative to non-Hispanic Whites. Latinos whose primary language is Spanish and who care for a family member with dementia (Spanish language dementia caregivers, SLDCs) have even more risk factors than the general Latino population. Although more SLDCs own a smartphone than a computer to access resources online, few caregiver resources are specifically developed for smartphones. We have developed a multicomponent mobile health (mHealth) intervention, the Spanish Resiliency and Cognition – engagement (SPARC-e) program. SPARC-e is accessible via smartphone for SLDCs and aims to help them increase healthy behaviors and reduce symptoms of caregiver distress. SPARC-e, provides healthy behavior information, and motivation to make changes via smartphone peer support group chat. In this study, we will test the feasibility and acceptability of SPARC-e for SLDCs in a randomized, controlled trial. We will assess whether SPARC-e increases healthy behavior adherence in SLDCs relative to a control that has all components except the peer support chat, and determine if SPARC-e is associated with candidate mediators (social support and self-efficacy). Finally, we will investigate whether SPARC-e improves cognition and psychological symptoms among SLDCs.