Harvard Catalyst Profiles

The Massachusetts Institute for Equity-Focused Learning Health System Science (Mass EQLHS) has funded and non-funded opportunities for students to work with Mass EQLHS partners on projects focused on advancing health equity and improving health care delivery. Mass EQLHS brings together a cross-institutional alliance, including Beth Israel Lahey Health, Mass General Brigham, UMass, Veterans Affairs, Cambridge Health Alliance, and Community Health Centers, intended to accelerate equity-focused, patient-centered research to address health disparities and improve outcomes. The Institute, is one of 16 nationally designated Centers of Excellence in learning health system science. Our federally-funded research aims to: 1) Advance the development of a diverse workforce of embedded equity-focused learning health system scientists across the professional development lifecycle (student through faculty); 2) Accelerate enduring advancement in equity-focused learning health system science by adopting common data standards for equity measures and social drivers of health; 3) Forge a strong cross institutional alliance between community, safety net, academic health systems, patients, mentors, and scholars to drive widespread and enduring change through the implementation of successful research learnings into healthcare delivery. Students would become part of the Mass EQLHS community and could participate in community-wide activities. The institute has funding for several student projects ranging from 8 weeks to 12 months duration. Scholarly projects and educational goals could include a literature review on learning health system science focused on equity; environmental scan of health systems’ practices around measuring health equity and social drivers of health; interviews around how health systems collect patient information on equity measures and social drivers of health; review and interviews on best practices in human-centered research in health care; or work directly with community centers and Mass EQLHS partners. Projects may involve qualitative and quantitative data collection, analysis, interpretation, and reporting; human-centered design; data science; implementation science; health equity research frameworks; and health system science.