Funded Research

The Integration of Behavioral Health and Primary Care in Community Health Centers
The Center for Community Health Education Research and Service (CCHERS) and Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Andrea Ault-Brutus of Harvard Medical School, are collaborating on a planning grant from Harvard Catalyst which seeks to examine integration of primary care and behavioral health care and its impact on providing services to Black/ African American patients in community health centers in the Boston area. As part of this process, they’re interviewing providers along the spectrum of behavioral health and primary care. This is an opportunity for the community to inform the development of a research study that examines the integration of primary care and behavioral health care in community health centers and providing behavioral health services to Boston’s most vulnerable populations.

My Body My Story

Nuestro Futuro Saludable
The JP Partnership for Healthy Caribbean Latino Youth was initiated in response to a 2009 National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities call for proposals to design, implement, evaluate and disseminate health disparities research interventions in partnership with community members. Tufts University researchers convened an advisory board comprised of local providers and residents including youth and parents, who determined that a research intervention to address health disparities among youth in the Jamaica Plain (JP) neighborhood of Boston should target stress as a priority area. Elements of the built environment and the community’s social context such as poverty, inequity, and segregation are known to exacerbate chronic stress. The specific factors in JP that contribute to increased stress are a reflection of socioeconomic and environmental conditions, including a lack of economic opportunity for youth, violence, gentrification, and low quality education. To address these issues, we designed the intervention as a 10-week after-school program in an urban middle school. The intervention curriculum is focused on teaching youth about the social determinants of physical activity, nutrition and stress in JP. It aims to decrease stress by changing attitudes and behavior regarding physical activity and nutrition, while increasing empowerment and community engagement. Students in grades 6-8 (ages 11-15) were invited to participate, and 67 were enrolled in the intervention. We will describe the community process through which the intervention was developed and implemented, as well as the underlying theory, curricular elements and intervention outcomes.