Our Team
Beier Nelson, Co-Founder and Executive Director
Beier Nelson is an undergraduate student at Harvard College from Philadelphia, PA studying Molecular & Cellular Biology and Government. He is passionate about the intersection between the the science behind human health and disease as well as the social determinants of health, specifically the barriers preventing communities from accessing the care they need.
Aditya Tummala, Co-Founder and Executive Director
Aditya Tummala is an undergraduate student at Harvard College from Brookings, SD studying Biomedical Engineering. He is passionate about socioeconomic disparities as a barrier to health care in rural and marginalized communities, looking towards biomedical and sociological innovation as a tool for dismantling these barriers.
Olivia Foster, Media Director
Olivia Foster is an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Dallas from Brookings, SD, double majoring in Global Business and Marketing with a minor in Spanish. She sees the necessity of intercultural communication, especially in regard to equitable healthcare access, and looks forward to helping create tools to deconstruct these obstacles.
Dr. Zara Latif, MD, Physician Director
Dr. Latif is a chief medical resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Katherine Swan Ginsburg Humanism in Medicine Fellow. Dr. Latif is a native Arabic speaker with a strong passion for studying disparities facing limited English proficiency patients in our healthcare system. Her research is focused on enhancing cardiovascular care to limited English speakers by integrating interpreters into the care team and highlighting the degree of disparities facing this patient population. Dr. Latif has also designed and led several workshops for internal medicine residents and interpreters to enhance communication.
Advisory Board
Aswita Tan-McGrory, MBA, MSPH
Aswita Tan-McGrory serves the Director of the Disparities Solutions Center as well as the Director of Equity in Care Implementation at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her work focuses on addressing racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare as well as providing operational and implementational leadership for assuring equity in access to and delivery of clinical care.
Dr. Gezzer Ortega, MD, MPH, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Dr. Ortega is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Lead Faculty for Research and Innovation for Equitable Surgical Care at the Center for Surgery and Public Health at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Born in a low-income Brooklyn neighborhood to immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic, Dr. Ortega’s work centers on improving surgical care for low-income and historically underserved populations and promoting language-concordant care for patients with limited English proficiency.
Dr. Pracha Eamranond, MD, MPH, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Dr. Eamranond is an internal medicine physician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and teaches the Social Medicine and Practice of Medicine courses at Harvard Medical School. As Chief Medical Officer for a multitude of healthcare provider organizations, he cares for patients with complex psychosocial and medical issues within the prison and Mass General Brigham healthcare systems. Regularly spearheading international endeavors for improving healthcare in underprivileged communities locally and across Asia, Africa, and South America, he has significantly improved outcomes for the health of disadvantaged populations.
Dr. Kori Zachrison, MD, MSc, Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. Zachrison is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Division of Health Services Research in the MGB Department of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Zachrison’s academic focus is on improving access to and delivery of telemedicine and stroke systems of care. She is the Co-Principle Investigator of a national stroke quality improvement initiative through the American College of Emergency Physicians Emergency Quality Network (E-QUAL).
Dr. Daniel Palazuelos, MD, MPH, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Dr. Palazuelos is the Assistant Director of the Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital and teaches global health at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Palazuelos is also the Co-founder and Chief Strategist of Compañeros En Salud, the Partners in Health sister-project in Mexico. Dr. Palazuelos has and continues to dedicate his work to global health advocacy through direct patient care as well as the training of future global health clinicians.
Dr. Qi Tan, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Tan is a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School studying the human and microbial determinants of poor treatment outcomes of Tuberculosis and evaluating tools to improve these outcomes. Prior to arriving to HMS, Dr. Tan led the impatient pulmonary care team and trained resident physicians at Jiangsu Province Hospital, one of the best hospitals in China. Passionate about improving language access to health, Dr. Tan is heavily involved in The Health Fluency Project's efforts to support the Mandarin-speaking population in Boston.
Dr. Wudeneh Mulugeta, MD, MPH, FACP, Cambridge Health Alliance
Dr. Mulugeta is an academic physician triple board-certified in Internal Medicine, Preventive Medicine, and Obesity Medicine. He is a faculty at Harvard Medical School and volunteer affiliate/ visiting Assistant Professor at St. Paul Medical College. He has extensive clinical and public health experience as well as a wide range of research interests and expertise in obesity, medical education, patient safety, quality improvement and global health. He has authored several scientific publications on obesity and chronic diseases and presented his work at national and international conferences. . He is a fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine and the American College of Physicians.
Dr. Sarrah Shahawy, MD, MPH, OB-GYN, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Sarrah Shahawy, an OBGYN clinician and Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center researcher, and educator, specializes in sexual and reproductive health research, with a focus on migrant women. Her work spans community-based research with immigrant and refugee groups in the US and also addresses global health issues in the Middle East North African region. Through her research, community health, and global health work, she has developed expertise in Muslim women’s health by working with Muslim populations both in the US and abroad and is passionate about improving obstetric and gynecologic care as well as research to better holistically serve her Muslim and underrepresented patients in her community and beyond.