Practicum

The practicum project is an opportunity to put into practice health equity and health policy innovations using skills developed in the didactic portion of the fellowship.


Examples of current ED-based projects:

Opioid Crisis

  • Development, implementation, and evaluation of a city-wide opioid response plan
  • Healthcare contacts prior to fatal and non-fatal overdose

Immigrant Health

  • Improving the care of patients with limited english proficiency in the ED and outpatient setting
  • Video vs phone interpreting in the ED - assessment of patient understanding with different interpreting modalities
  • Effect of national immigration policy on ED utilization

Healthcare for Individuals Experiencing Homelessness

  • Provider attitudes towards homeless patients in the ED
  • Feasibility and implementation of expanding services provided to homeless patients in the ED during episodic and seasonal disease outbreaks (hepatitis and influenza)


The Department of Emergency Medicine has active and developing relationships and collaborations with a variety of public health and research organizations. These agencies and departments provide operational and research support to a variety of projects within the department of emergency medicine, and to the Cambridge Health Alliance. Major partners include:


Cambridge Public Health Department

The Cambridge Public Health Department is a city department administered by Cambridge Health Alliance. The department’s main focus areas are community health and wellness, communicable disease prevention and control, emergency preparedness, environmental health, epidemiology, regulatory enforcement, and school health.


Health Equity Research Lab at Cambridge Health Alliance

The Health Equity Research Lab is an interdisciplinary group of researchers and clinicians dedicated to conducting research to improve physical and mental health in diverse communities. The center is linked to the Cambridge Health Alliance and its mission of improving community health by ensuring the provision of services with a focus on mental health and health service delivery issues relevant to multicultural populations. ​The Lab is a facilitator for information exchange, bringing together people interested in multicultural health issues and training junior investigators in methods of measuring disparities and development of disparities reducing interventions.

Current projects include:

  • Improving Patient Safety for Patients with Limited English Proficiency
  • Gender Minority Health and Healthcare Disparities
  • Follow-up after Acute Mental Health Treatment among Racial-Ethnic Minority Youth
  • Neighborhood-level Predictors of Opioid-Related Mortality