Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health	MPH
University of Massachusetts Medical School	MD
Harvard College	BA

Dr. Lara Jirmanus is a family physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance and a Clinical Instructor at Harvard Medical School, part-time, and a faculty member at the CHA Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy. She founded the Massachusetts Coalition for Health Equity, a group of public health and community leaders advocating for an equitable response to the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, and the Health and Law Immigrant Solidarity Network, a group of healthcare and legal professionals and community organizations supporting immigrants in Eastern Massachusetts. Jirmanus has been involved in grassroots organizing, advocacy and research for many years, addressing worker and immigrant rights in the US, infectious diseases in Brazil and the impact of conflict and displacement in the Middle East. Her research interests include health equity, immigrant health, community-based participatory research, and community health workers. Her current research is focused on the impacts of social determinants of health screening.

After graduating from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, she completed family medicine residency at Boston University Medical Center, a fellowship in Global Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an MPH at the Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Jirmanus served as chief resident in Family Medicine at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon and a fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. She taught a global health and social medicine course at AUB Medical School and an interdisciplinary seminar on the Syrian refugee crisis at Harvard University.

• immigrant health
• Community-Based Participatory Research
• Community Health Workers
• Health Equity
• Lebanon
• Palestine