Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA	BA	06/1995	Biological Anthropology
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA	MD	06/2005
Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA	MPH	06/2009	Clinical Effectiveness
Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Cambridge, MA	Improvement Advisor	08/2012	Quality Improvement

Dr Arbour implements and evaluates interventions to promote maternal and child health and reduce inequities in the U.S. and abroad, using a combination of experimental, ethnographic and quality improvement methodologies. She has particular interests in methods for adapting evidence-based practices across diverse contexts and populations, and in scale.

Dr. Arbour’s research projects include:
- the first national quality improvement collaborative for home visiting services (HV CoIIN, Home Visiting Collaboration for Improvement and Innovation Network, US Department of Maternal and Child Health), which improved services for low-income families with young children and outcomes in child developmental surveillance and screening, maternal depression, and breastfeeding. HV CoIIN 2.0 was funded to spread these improvements to 25 states and 250 home visiting programs.
- expansion of a universal, pediatric primary care approach that addresses social determinants of health by embedding a community health worker in a team that integrates representatives from and leverages the strengths of three sectors—early childhood, legal, and health (DULCE, Developmental Understanding and Legal Collaboration for Everyone),
- cluster-randomized trial of a school-based intervention to improve children’s health and learning in public preschools in Chile, subsequently scaled up through learning collaboratives and evaluated using quasi-experimental designs in latter expansion.
- post-disaster interventions and assessments, including after the 2005 tsunami in Indonesia, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the 2010 earthquake in Chile.

Dr. Arbour leads quality improvement capacity-building efforts, including curriculum development and delivery in Spanish and English with health, public health, and education professionals, paraprofessionals and students in Chile, Peru, Argentina, and more than 30 U.S. states and 2 tribal entities. She also teaches and mentors medical residents and students in clinical medicine and research.

Dr. Arbour is a primary care physician and Assistant Medical Director of the BWH Social Care team that is responsible for addressing social determinants of health in 14 primary care practices.

• maternal and child health
• implementation research
• home visiting
• quality improvement
• maternal depression
• Chile
• social determinants of health
• Primary Care