Chief Disparities Research Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital

Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School

Professor of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School

The Harry G. Lehnert, Jr. and Lucille F. Cyr Lehnert Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair Mass General Research Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital

disparity research; ethnic groups; healthcare disparities; hispanic americans; mental disorders; mental health; mental health services; racial disparities; socioeconomic factors of mental health

Margarita Alegría, PhD is the Chief of the Disparities Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Alegría is currently the PI of four National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research studies: the International Latino Research Partnership; Effects of Social Context, Culture and Minority Status on Depression and Anxiety; Building Community Capacity for Disability Prevention for Minority Elders; and Mechanisms Underlying Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Mental Disorders. She is also the PI of a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) project: Effectiveness of DECIDE in Patient-Provider Communication, Therapeutic Alliance & Care Continuation. Dr. Alegría has published over 200 papers, editorials, intervention training manuals, and several book chapters, on topics such as improvement of health care services delivery for diverse racial and ethnic populations, conceptual and methodological issues with multicultural populations, and ways to bring the community’s perspective into the design and implementation of health services.

As an acknowledgement of her contributions to her field, Dr. Alegría has been widely recognized and cited. Among her awards are the Mental Health Section Award of the American Public Health Association, 2003; the Health Disparities Innovation Award from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, 2008; and the Award of Excellence from the National Hispanic Science Network on Drug Abuse in 2011. In October 2011, she was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Alegría was selected as El Planeta’s (Massachusetts’s largest circulating Spanish-language newspaper) 2013’s Powermeter 100 most influential people for the Hispanic community in Massachusetts. Most recently, Dr. Alegria received the 2016 Cynthia Lucero Latino Mental Health Award from William James College.