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Researchers, Projects and Mentors

Early Career Researchers

Photo of Dr. Mena Ads
Contact Dr. Ads

Dr. Mena Ads joined CHA in 2019 after completing postdoctoral fellowships at Boston Children’s Hospital and Cleveland Clinic in cardiac neurodevelopment and pediatric behavioral health. Before that, she completed her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Detroit Mercy in 2016.

In her current role as a pediatric psychologist, her research projects have included co-managing depression and pediatric obesity which have been supported by CHA Patient Care Fund awards, a CHA Learning Health Scholarship Research Grant and a grant from the Weil Foundation. She's passionate about working within primary care within her integrated care team to help co-manage chronic conditions and address mental health disparities with a focus on family-centered, culturally sensitive care.

Photo of Azeesat Babajide
Contact Dr. Babajide

Dr. Azeesat Babajide completed her adult psychiatry residency at Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute and her child psychiatry fellowship at UCLA. She joined CHA in 2020.

Throughout her career, she has maintained interests in systems of care, including considerations around the utility of integrated care models and challenges around transitions of care for young adults. She has presented work in this area at national conferences and has served on the American Psychiatric Association's Council for Children, Adolescents and their Families. She recently received the Harvard Medical School Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership Research Fellowship award which provides funding to study the barriers and facilitators to transitions for young adults at CHA.

Photo of Vee Faller
Contact Dr. Faller

Dr. Vee Faller is a Double Boarded psychiatrist who completed adult psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital and her child/adolescent psychiatry fellowship at CHA. She then joined our faculty and works as an attending psychiatrist at CHA's Community Behavioral Health Center urgent care clinic. She also precepts CAP fellows in the therapeutic residential setting at Walden Street School, where she serves as consulting psychiatrist.

Dr. Faller was recently awarded the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology's Faculty Innovation in Education award which provides funding to study and disseminate the "Bias at the Bedside" workshop, which teaches multidisciplinary teams to respond to incidents of bias in the teaching hospital setting.

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Contact Dr. Hyatt

Dr. Andrew Hyatt began at Cambridge Health Alliance in 2018 after graduating from the Boston University School of Medicine. He completed Adult Psychiatry Residency at CHA in 2022.

He is passionate about improving care for marginalized populations, especially those with psychosis and substance use disorders and brings these interests to both his research and clinical work. He was awarded the Dupont Warren Fellowship and Livingston Award through Harvard Medical School in 2022 to study outcomes after patients leave early psychosis programs and is particularly interested in the intersection of early psychosis and substance use. 


Photo of Dr. Xenia Johnson Bhembe
Contact Dr. Bhembe

Dr. Xenia Bhembe is a Double Board senior psychiatrist at Cambridge Health Alliance with over twenty years in clinical practice. She is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Part-Time at Harvard Medical School and currently serves as Director of Behavioral Health at the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center.

Her research interests include the relationship between internalized racism and access to mental health services for both adults and children. She currently leads a qualitative study on internalized racism through the PRO, and a mixed methods study through the CHA Alacrity Center, examining the relationship between race and racism among Black parents and completed referrals to mental health treatment for their children. 

Photo of Dr. Ellie Richards
Contact Dr. Richards

Ellie Richards, Ph.D. is a psychologist in the child & adolescent outpatient department at CHA. She specializes in providing care to high-risk adolescents, particularly those who are multi-system involved. She also serves as team lead for school-based mental health.

Dr. Richards was a Learning Health Scholar (LHS) in the Department of Psychiatry under the wonderful mentorship of Dr. Margaret Weiss. During her time as an LHS, Dr. Richards applied for and was accepted to the Gold-Innovation Fellowship at CHA and led a project centered around improving care coordination for adolescent patients treated in both inpatient and outpatient settings. She also investigated patterns of behavioral health care within three school-based health centers at CHA based on data from the electronic medical record system, which was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Drs. Richards and Weiss continue to co-lead an NIMH-funded project on stress and coping among high school students within the Health Equity Research Lab. 

Photo of Dr. Lisa Rosenfeld
Contact Dr. Rosenfeld

Dr. Lisa Rosenfeld joined CHA in 2020 and is a psychiatrist and Medical Director of the Health Integration Program, a multidisciplinary behavioral health home that serves individuals with chronic psychosis. Through this work, she is intimately familiar with the day-to-day challenges that front-line clinicians face when caring for diverse patients with complex psychosocial needs, and this awareness drives her research agenda which focuses on Measurement-Based Care and Digital Health Equity.

She has held a fellowship at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and has participated in the Learning Health Scholar Program at Cambridge Health Alliance. She has also served as lead clinician-researcher on three Quality Improvement projects and one sequential mixed-methods research study assessing the barriers and facilitators to implementing Measurement-Based Care in low-resource settings.

Photo of Dr. Emily Wilner
Contact Dr. Wilner

Dr. Emily Wilner is a bilingual (Spanish) neuropsychologist and clinical psychologist who joined CHA in 2013. Currently she is the Program Leader of the Health Integration Program (HIP), CHA’s outpatient clinic for individuals with chronic psychotic illnesses.

Her research interests include multicultural neuropsychology and the treatment of psychosis, the latter which involves her current role as site PI in a multisite, PCORI-funded study examining the effectiveness of two evidence-based psychosocial interventions for psychosis: Cognitive Enhancement Therapy and Social Skills Training. She is also investigating the role of treatment engagement in First Episode Psychosis programming. Additionally, Dr. Wilner holds an HMS appointment as an Instructor in Psychiatry through which she supervises neuropsychology fellows and psychology interns at CHA. 

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Group of smiling young researchers in front of their research poster
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Our Amazing Mentors

Senior researchers in the department provide mentorship to early career clinician researchers affiliated with the PRO. They support our researchers' career trajectories, and help with research questions and topic development, research design, proposal submissions, poster and podium presentations, and manuscript development and publication.

Photo of Dr. Nicholas Carson

Nicholas Carson

Primary Areas of Mentorship:
suicide, child and adolescent services research

Contact Dr. Carson

Photo of Dr. Ben Cook

     Benjamin Cook    

Primary Areas of Mentorship:
disparities measurement, quantitative methods, equity

Contact Dr. Cook

Photo of Dr. Lynn delisi

Lynn DeLisi

Primary Areas of Mentorship:
schizophrenia, first episode psychosis, clinical trials

Contact Dr. DeLisi

Photo of Dr. Carl Fulwiler

Carl Fulwiler

Primary Areas of Mentorship:
mental health services, mindfulness interventions, cultural adaptations for underserved populations

Contact Dr. Fulwiler

Photo of Dr. Norah Mulvaney Day

Norah Mulvaney Day

Primary Areas of Mentorship:
mixed methods and qualitative research, participatory research, health systems and implementation

Contact Dr. Mulvaney Day

Photo of Dr. Margaret Weiss

Margaret Weiss

Primary Areas of Mentorship:
child mental health services, neurodevelopmental disorders, development of measures

Contact Dr. Weiss

Our Projects

Some of Our Current Research Areas:

  • Factors associated with successful transition from child psychiatry to adult psychiatry for transition age youth (18 to 20)

  • Predictors of relapse among individuals in the first year following a first episode psychosis

  • Experiences of individuals following a hospitalization for first episode psychosis, and predictors of subsequent successful engagement in care

  • Understanding and unpacking indicators of suicidal behavior among youth who have been hospitalized for a mental health condition.

  • Improving treatment for children who have comorbid obesity and behavioral health conditions through an integrated intervention delivered in primary care.

Recent Publications and Presentations:

  • A Scoping Review of the Intersectionality of Autism and Intellectual and Developmental Disability with Social Inequity on Diagnosis and Treatment of Youth

    Weiss, M.D., Daniolos, P.T., Coughlin, K., Mulvaney-Day, N., Cook, B., & Rosenblum, D. (2024). 

    Objective: To describe how the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, and language with autism and intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) impacts mental health inequities in psychopharmacological management of youth. Method: This was a scoping review in which a series of searches were conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and manual review of the articles collected. Results: Although autism and/or IDD increases the risk for poor physical and mental health, social determinants of health such as race, ethnicity, and language account for approximately a third of poor outcomes. Minoritized children with autism/IDD experience significantly greater delays to diagnosis and misdiagnosis and are less likely to receive appropriate services. Access to psychological testing and psychosocial services is often limited by availability, skilled practitioners, a shortage of non-English-language providers or interpreters, and poor reimbursement. Conclusion: The intersectionality of autism and/or IDD with race, ethnicity, and language compounds the health inequities associated with either of these challenges independently.

    Read the Article

  • Association between electronic nicotine product use and subsequent first episode psychosis

    Hyatt, A.S., Mulvaney-Day, N., Chow, C.M., Cook, B.L., & Delisi, L.E. (2024). 

    Tobacco use has been established as a possible risk factor for psychosis, but the effect of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ex. nicotine vapes) has not been independently established. Using the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health study, we found that use of electronic nicotine products was significantly associated with later first episode psychosis after controlling for substance use and other confounders, and that this relationship was only significant among the heaviest users (>20 puffs/day). Given the rapid rise in electronic nicotine products use, clinicians and public health professionals should consider potential impacts and closely monitor trends in the coming years.

    Read the Article

  • The Impact of School Closures on Service Utilization in School-Based Health Center

    Richards, E.C., Allen, M.R., & Weiss, M.D. (2023).

    Background: The pandemic was followed by a severe mental health crisis in youth with both an increase in the prevalence of mental health problems and a decrease in requests for and access to care. Methods: data were extracted from the school-based health center records in three large public high schools that include under-resourced and immigrant communities. Data from 2018/2019 (pre-pandemic), 2020 during the pandemic, and then in 2021 after the return to in-person school were compared regarding the impact of in-person, telehealth, and hybrid care. Results: Despite the increase in mental health needs globally, there was a dramatic decrease in referrals, evaluations, and the total number of students seen for behavioral health care. The time course of this decrease in care was specifically associated with the transition to telehealth, although treatment did not return to pre-pandemic levels, even after in-person care became available. Conclusions: Despite ease of access and increased need, these data suggest that telehealth has unique limitations when delivered in school-based health centers.

    Read the Article

  • What happens after early intervention in first-episode psychosis? Limitations of existing service models and an agenda for the future.

    Hyatt, A. S., Hasler, V., & Wilner, E. K. (2022).

    Early intervention in first-episode psychosis (FEP) improves symptomatic and functional outcomes while programs last. However, these gains may not be sustained over time and not all individuals benefit equally from such programs. This review examines the efficacy of FEP programs, as well as step-down practices and long-term outcomes to identify ways to extend the gains made in FEP programs. 

    Read the Article

  • Remote Care Management for Older Adult Populations With Elevated Prevalence of Depression or Anxiety and Comorbid Chronic Medical Illness: A Systematic Review.

    Lim, C. T., Rosenfeld, L. C., Nissen, N. J., Wang, P. S., Patel, N. C., Powers, B. W., & Huang, H. (2022). 

    A systematic review was performed in accordance with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. A multidatabase search was performed. Articles were included for review if they studied fully remote care management for older adult populations with elevated prevalence of depression or anxiety and chronic medical illness or poor physical health. A narrative synthesis was performed.

    Read the Article

  • Toward Population Health: Using a Learning Behavioral Health System and Measurement-Based Care to Improve Access, Care, Outcomes, and Disparities.

    Tepper, M. C., Ward, M. C., Aldis, R., Lanca, M., Wang, P.S., Fulwiler, C.E. (2022).

    Achieving population behavioral health is urgently needed. The mental health system struggles with enormous challenges of providing access to mental health services, improving quality and equitability of care, and ensuring good health outcomes across subpopulations. Little data exists about increasing access within highly constrained resources, staging/sequencing treatment along care pathways, or personalizing treatments. The conceptual model of the learning healthcare system offers a potential paradigm shift for addressing these challenges. In this article we present an overview of how the three constructs of population health, learning health systems, and measurement-based care are inter-related, and we provide an example of how one academic, community-based, safety net health system is approaching integrating these paradigms into its service delivery system. Implementation outcomes will be described in a subsequent publication. We close by discussing how ultimately, to meaningfully improve population behavioral health, a learning healthcare system could expand into a learning health community in order to target critical points of prevention and intervention.

    Read the Article

  • Promoting Population Behavioral Health in a Safety-Net Health System During the COVID-19 Pandemic

    Lim, C. T., Fulwiler, C. E., Carson, N. E., Huang, H., Robinson, L. A., Schuman-Olivier, Z., O'Brien, C.J., Wang, P. S. & Tepper, M. C. (2021). 

    The COVID-19 pandemic has been expected to lead to substantial increases in need for behavioral health care. A population health framework can facilitate the development of interventions and policies to promote the equitable distribution of care across the population. This column describes the application of population behavioral health principles in a safety-net health system during the pandemic. The approach includes stepped models of care, interventions to target individuals at high behavioral health risk, and measurement-based care. Early data suggest that these strategies have resulted in expanded behavioral health care capacity.

    Read the Article

  • CHA Research Presentations

    • Chasson, M., Khoury, J., Ahtam, B., Fleming, L.L., Ou, Y., Bosquet Enlow, M., Grant, E., & Lyons-Ruth, K. Maternal Experience of Childhood Neglect is Linked to Increased Infant Cortisol Levels and Stress-Regulatory Brain Regions. Harvard Psychiatry Research Day and Mysell Lecture (March 13, 2024)

    • Johnson Bhembe, X., Mulvaney-Day, N., Lorjuste, R., & Fulwiler, C. Black Adults' Assessment of Internalized Racism: A Focus Group Study. Harvard Psychiatry Research Day and Mysell Lecture (March 13, 2024)

    • Lanca, M., Zona, K., Mulvaney-Day, N., Engineer, N., & Progovac, A. Using Implementation Science to Design a Training and Improve Evaluation Relevance for Measurement-Based Care in Adolescent Inpatient Psychiatry. Harvard Psychiatry Research Day and Mysell Lecture (March 13, 2024)

    • Progovac, A., Rosenfeld, L., Lanca, M., Zona, K., Aldis, R., Leff, S., Mulvaney-Day, N., Wang, P., Wang, D., & Fulwiler, C. Provider Experiences of Digital Measurement-Based Care (MBC) Roll-out in an Urban, Safety Net Psychiatry Department: A 3-Site Mixed-Methods Implementation Research Study. Harvard Psychiatry Research Day and Mysell Lecture (March 13, 2024)

    • Williams, P., Yang, X., Mullin, B., Stettenbauer, E., Waddington, M., Zhang, A., Cook, B., & Carson, N. Predicting Adolescent Suicidal Behavior Following Inpatient Discharge Using Structured and Unstructured Data. Harvard Psychiatry Research Day and Mysell Lecture (March 13, 2024)

    • Ads, M., Carson, N., Benedetto, E., Busa, J., Lambert, J.T., Shagrin, B., Cruz-Delaney, S., Mayor, I., & Mulvaney-Day, N. Multidisciplinary Pediatric Group Visits for Managing Obesity in Primary Care. CHA Academic Poster Session (September 28, 2023) 

    • Aldis, R., Rosenfeld, L., Mulvaney-Day, N., Lanca, M., Zona, K., Lam, J.A, Asfour, J., Meltzer, J., Leff, H.S., Fulwiler, C., Wang, P., & Progovac, A.M. Determinants of Remote Measurement-Based Care Uptake in a Safety Net Psychiatry Outpatient Department. CHA Academic Poster Session (September 28, 2023) 

    • Babajide, A., Mulvaney-Day, N., Cook, B., & Carson, N. Identifying Barriers and Facilitators to Mental Health Care Transitions for Young Adults in a Safety Net Hospital System. CHA Academic Poster Session (September 28, 2023) 

    • Hyatt, A., Mullin, B., Hasler, V., Madore, D., Progovac, A., Cook, B.L., & Delisi, L. Predicting Relapse and Care Engagement after Exit from CHA's First Episode Psychosis Clinic (RISE). CHA Academic Poster Session (September 28, 2023) 

    • Progovac, A.M., Zona, K., Mulvaney-Day, N., Engineer, N., & Lanca, M. Using Implementation Science to Design a Training and Improve Evaluation Relevance for Measurement-Based Care in Child and Adolescent Inpatient Psychiatry. CHA Academic Poster Session (September 28, 2023) 

    • Progovac, A.M., Rosenfeld, L., Lanca, M., Zona, K., Aldis, R., Leff, H.S., Mulvaney-Day, N., Wang, P., Wang, D., & Fulwiler, C. Provider Experiences of Digital Measurement-Based Care (MBC) Roll-out in an Urban, Safety Net Psychiatry Department: A 3-Site Mixed-Methods Implementation Research Study. CHA Academic Poster Session (September 28, 2023) 

    • Progovac, A.M., Rosenfeld, L., Leff, S.H., Zhang, A., Tian, L., Huttlin, E., Wang, D., Fulwiler, C., Aldis, R., Wang, P., Stahr, J., Mulvaney-Day, N., Lanca, M., & Tepper, M.C. Remote Measurement-Based Care to Improve Equity in Psychiatry: Contrasting Pre-Implementation Patient, Provider, and Administrative Leader Attitudes. CHA Academic Poster Session (September 28, 2023) 

    • Williams, P., Yang, X., Mullin, B., Stettenbauer, E., Waddington, M., Zhang, A., Cook, B., & Carson, N. Predicting Adolescent Suicidal Behavior Following Inpatient Discharge Using Structured and Unstructured EHR Data. CHA Academic Poster Session (September 28, 2023) 

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