KRAFT CENTER LEADERSHIP
Elsie M. Taveras, MD, MPH
Executive Director
Dr. Taveras is Chief Community Health Equity Officer at Mass General Brigham and Conrad Taff Professor at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Taveras is a pediatrician and epidemiologist by training and a national leader in community health who has focused her career on developing clinical-community programs that improve the health of children and families while reducing health disparities. She has extensive experience building clinical-community partnerships for chronic disease prevention and management and has directed the implementation of many community and population health programs to promote health and health equity for disadvantaged populations.
Her community health work complements her clinical, investigative, and teaching expertise. Her clinical work is in pediatric weight management and developing innovative approaches to the treatment of childhood obesity in children and adolescents. She is also an accomplished academician who has established a seminal body of work on prevention and management of childhood obesity, as well as social determinants of health and health equity. She has published over 160 research studies and served on multiple Committees for the National Academy of Medicine. Her work in childhood obesity was cited by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as one of the most influential studies of 2010 and in the White House Task Force Report on Childhood Obesity in May 2010.
Dr. Taveras is also a gifted mentor and has fostered the career development of many Harvard Medical School and Harvard Chan School of Public Health trainees at a variety of levels. In service to the medical community and public health, Dr. Taveras regularly presents lectures at national and international conferences and has prepared reports for several local, national, and international organizations on approaches to reduce childhood obesity and reduce health disparities.
In 2016, she received the Public Health Leadership in Medicine Award from the Massachusetts Public Health Association in recognition of her work improving health and health care in community-based settings. In 2017, she was honored as one of Boston’s Most Influential Women by the Women of the Harvard Club of Boston.
Craig Regis, MPH
Program Director
As Program Director, Craig oversees the day to day activities of The Kraft Center for Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to joining The Kraft Center, Craig served for over five years in the Boston Public Health Commission’s (BPHC) Infectious Disease Bureau, first as a Program Manager, then as an Epidemiologist, and finally as Director of Education & Community Engagement. During his time at BPHC, Craig worked on a variety of initiatives, including projects pertaining to Hepatitis C, chlamydia, food safety, and HIV among Boston residents. Craig also teaches Epidemiology & Population Health at the Northeastern University Bouvé College of Health Sciences and works part-time for Health Innovations, a company that brings services such as HIV testing, prevention/education, and linkage to care to non-traditional venues for those in communities across Massachusetts who are the most vulnerable and at most risk for a number of health conditions.
Craig received his Master of Public Health from the Boston University School of Public Health, and his Bachelor of Science from the University of Notre Dame.
Maddie Davies, MPH
Sr. Program Manager, Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control Equity
Maddie is a Sr. Project/Program Manager on The Kraft Center’s Implementation Laboratory team within the Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control Equity. Prior to working at The Kraft Center, Maddie worked for 3.5 years at Boston Children’s Hospital in the Office of Community Health. In her role at Boston Children’s, she managed the Fitness in the City program, a childhood obesity intervention in health centers, and also worked on health center capacity building and professional development projects. Additionally, she supported the hospital’s Collaboration for Community Health (Determination of Need funding) in the areas of physical activity and food access, early childhood development and youth support. Before Children’s she was a member of the MGH Center for Community Health Improvement’s Evaluation Team, evaluating the youth programs and the working with the coalitions in Charlestown, Chelsea, Revere and East Boston.
Maddie received her Master of Public Health from Boston University School of Public Health and Bachelor of Arts in Public Health from Simmons University.
Priya Sarin Gupta, MD, MPH
Medical Director for Mobile Health Services
Dr. Priya Sarin Gupta, MD, MPH, serves as the Medical Director for Community-Based Clinical Programs at Mass General Brigham in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer. As the Medical Director for Mobile Health and Special Projects at the Kraft Center for Community Health and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, she seamlessly combines her expertise with a passion for innovation and empowering the next generation of leaders working at the cross point of public health and medicine. Dr. Sarin Gupta is a compassionate primary care physician and a dedicated implementation science researcher, whose work focuses on health disparities and the role of social determinants in disease and health. She completed a fellowship in Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, a residency in family medicine at Brown University, and earned a Master of Public Health from Columbia University, specializing in the social determinants of health disparities- all of which continued to foster her deep commitment to this work.
From her undergraduate days at Johns Hopkins University, where she majored in public health, to her journey through medical school at Albany Medical College, Dr. Sarin Gupta has been steadfast in her commitment to understanding and addressing health disparities. Her philosophy centers on meeting communities where they are, embodying a belief that providing healthcare in innovative ways can transform the way we center health equity and wellbeing in our neighborhoods.
Lyv Norris
Project Manager, Driving Equity and Maternal Health Innovation Initiative
Lyv Norris (they/she) is a project manager at the Kraft Center, working to launch the Driving Equity and Maternal Health (DrEaMH) Innovation Initiative which aims to improve maternal health outcomes in the Greater Boston Area. They have a varied background in public health advocacy and program design work related to ending the HIV epidemic, public health leadership development, youth empowerment, reproductive justice, and sexual health and wellness. Lyv’s passion for reproductive justice has driven them to pursue a career as a birth worker and midwife. Currently, they are pursuing a master’s degree in public health with a concentration on health equity at Boston University. Lyv firmly believes that achieving health equity necessitates the construction of new systems and structures that are inherently anti-racist and establish wellness as an essential human right. Lyv is driven by the belief that we must pour into our communities.
Lydia Pace, MD, MPH
Director of the Implementation Laboratory Team within ISCCCE
Dr. Lydia Pace is a primary care physician and a researcher in the Division of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her research focuses on advancing equity in delivery of women’s health care services, including cancer screening, in both the United States and in limited-resource settings around the world. She is the recipient of National Cancer Institute funding to examine breast cancer care quality and implementation of early detection programs in Rwanda, where she lived from 2011-2014 and continues to work. She also partners with the World Health Organization’s Global Breast Cancer Initiative. Dr. Pace also leads policy research and clinical initiatives to improve access to high-quality contraceptive care in the United States. She directs Women’s Health Policy and Advocacy in the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and directs the Connors Center’s Global Women’s Health Fellowship. Clinically, she practices primary care at the Jen Center for Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and cares for women at elevated risk of developing breast cancer in the BWH Breast Cancer Risk Assessment, Education and Prevention (B-PREP) program.