Elsie M. Taveras, M.D., M.P.H. 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. She received her Bachelor of Science and medical degrees from New York University and completed her internship, residency, and chief residency at the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics, and holds an MPH from the Harvard 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 life course 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. In 2016, she received the Public Health Leadership in Medicine Award from the Massachusetts Association of Public Health for her extensive work improving health and health care in community-based settings. In 2017, she was named Executive Director of the Kraft Center for Community Health, a national center devoted to catalyzing and spreading innovative best practices in community health to improve health outcomes for underserved patients, families and communities. She is also a member of the 2020 USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.