current and past projects
Video: Watch Bouvé building a new standard of excellence
Our projects can be divided into five research clusters:
See below to see our projects sorted by research cluster
Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In Not All In, Tiffany D. Joseph exposes the insidious contradiction of Massachusetts’ advanced health care system and the exclusionary experiences of its immigrant communities.
Joseph illustrates how patients’ race, ethnicity, and legal status determine their access to health coverage and care services, revealing a disturbing paradox where policy advances and individual experiences drastically diverge. Examining Boston’s Brazilian, Dominican, and Salvadoran communities, this book provides an exhaustive analysis spanning nearly a decade to highlight the profound impacts of the Affordable Care Act and subsequent policy shifts on these marginalized groups.
Not All In is a critical examination of the systemic barriers that perpetuate health care disparities. Joseph challenges readers to confront the uncomfortable truths about racialized legal status and its profound implications on health care access. This essential book illuminates the complexities of policy implementation and advocates for more inclusive reforms that genuinely cater to all. Urging policymakers, health care providers, and activists to rethink strategies that bridge the gap between legislation and life, this book reminds us that in the realm of health care, being progressive is not synonymous with inclusivity.
Contact Tiffany Joseph ([email protected]) to learn more.
This project will use epidemiology, system dynamics, and community-engaged methods to understand how individual and multiple components of the sociopolitical environment affect Black and Latinx immigrants’ CVD preventive care utilization.
Additional information about the project can be found on NIH Reporter.
Contact Danielle Crookes ([email protected]) to learn more.
The goal of this study is to identify preferences for long-acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis among populations at increased risk of HIV exposure.
Contact Tamara Jimah ([email protected]) to learn more.
Guided by Berry’s Model of Acculturation, this project seeks to understand how the interactions between home African cultures and U.S. cultural influences shape health behaviors among African immigrants, including diet and physical activity habits, and body image perceptions following migration. This project further aims to develop a culturally tailored digital lifestyle intervention designed to promote healthy behaviors and improve health outcomes among African immigrants living in the United States.
Contact Richard Bannor ([email protected]) to learn more.
COVID-19 significantly exacerbated conditions that can lead to intimate partner abuse. The NuLawLab worked with the School of Law’s Domestic Violence Institute (DVI) to create a service to respond to reported increases in domestic violence during the pandemic. Their goal was to provide survivors of intimate partner abuse in Boston with remote law student assistance consistent with law clinic operations, a novel, secure means of video-documenting client information and evidence using an app, digitally automated court form generation and filing, multiple channels that the survivors could use to learn about the DVI service and contact the clinic safely and securely and support following the legal consult, which included finding a safe shelter and helping survivors devise action plans to follow after they leave the shelter.
Contact Kim Miso ([email protected]) to learn more.
Early Childhood Mental Health: Children’s Mental Health Initiative (ECMH: Boston CMHI) is a program led by the Boston Public Health Commission that supports young children’s social and emotional development, particularly those involved with Healthy Baby/Healthy Child or Boston Healthy Start home visiting programs, as well as families in the foster care system. Originally funded as the ECMH FIRST Project, the initiative received an additional four years of funding from SAMHSA to expand services to children in home visiting programs while continuing services for families in foster care. This expansion prompted the program’s name change to ECMH: Boston CMHI.
Services are delivered through Children’s Services of Roxbury, with referrals from both the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and BPHC’s Healthy Start Systems. The evaluation study, conducted by researchers from the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at Northeastern University, follows the same research questions and methods as ECMH FIRST. Families’ medical records are shared with consent, and a subset of caregivers participates in program satisfaction surveys and interviews.
The overarching goals of ECMH: Boston CMHI are to improve access to culturally competent, evidence-based behavioral health services for children ages 0-48 months, and to expand promising elements of the program to broader child welfare, home visiting, and behavioral health initiatives statewide.
Contact Beth Molnar ([email protected]) to learn more.
Recent policy changes and new digital gambling products have led to a rapid increase in rates of sports betting, raising questions about whether these trends will increase disparities in people’s experiences with gambling disorder (GD). With the assistance of Health Equity Interns, we are addressing these gaps by considering how people discuss topics related to GD on two popular recreational sports betting forums on Reddit. Using methods from machine learning, text analysis, and network analysis, we are analyzing a sample of nearly 150,000 comments from 2012 to 2024 that mention key terms related to GD. Findings will carry the potential to inform practitioners’ understandings of how online recreational sports betting forums can both assist and inhibit people’s efforts to seek help for GD.
Contact Cassie McMillan ([email protected]) to learn more.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is supporting Northeastern University in exploring the intersection of health and human services to enhance whole-person care for vulnerable groups. Their efforts are part of a broader goal to foster a Culture of Health, which emphasizes creating healthier environments and ensuring access to comprehensive medical, economic, and social support services, with a robust human services sector being crucial for these objectives.
Visit their webpage to learn more.
This book project examines the cultural technologies of power artists and cultural producers employ to manipulate stigma and its resulting affects in performance projects oriented towards the alleviation of social inequalities. This includes performances explicitly and implicitly working to reduce stigma experienced by marginalized communities as well as performances working to stigmatize behaviors aligned with facets of oppressive hegemonic power.
Contact Dani Snyder-Young ([email protected]) to learn more.
Substance abuse is a major risk factor for intimate partner violence (IPV). We investigate how a key supply-side intervention – the abuse-deterrent reformulation of a widely-diverted opioid, OxyContin – affected IPV. Our results indicate counties with greater baseline rates of prescription opioid usage experienced relatively larger declines in IPV after OxyContin’s reformulation. The reformulation reduced IPV only in states with smaller illicit drug markets, while states with larger illicit drug markets experienced increased heroin-involved IPV due to substitution towards illicit opioids. Our results underscore the importance of identifying populations at high risk of substitution to illicit opioids and moderating this risk with evidence-based policies.
Contact Bilge Erten ([email protected]) to learn more.
This work examines how AI systems interact with suicide-related content, focusing on system behavior, responses, safeguards, and evaluation. Ongoing work includes (i) understanding how suicide is expressed through language and emotional expression, and (ii) identifying the medical and sociodemographic contexts that drive suicide risk. These findings are used as evidence to inform policy and deployment decisions involving AI systems.
Contact Annika Schoene ([email protected]) or visit their webpage to learn more
This study examines how co-occurring conditions (depression, anxiety, and cognitive impairment) affect serious clinical outcomes in older adults living with atrial fibrillation. Using longitudinal data, the project investigates whether patients with cognitive and psychosocial multimorbidity face a compounding risk of stroke, major bleeding, and death over two years. Findings from this work aim to identify a high-risk patient subset that may benefit from more targeted monitoring and care, with implications for how cognitive and psychosocial multimorbidity is addressed in cardiovascular disease management.
Contact Benita Bamgbade ([email protected]) to learn more.
This project is implementation science-based with a community clinic in Tampa, Florida targeting young people’s health behaviors (alcohol and substance use, sexual behavior, consequences, risk perception) and trained peer-counselors to review personalized feedback using motivational interview techniques. We’re tracking behavior change in a high-risk population over several years now, while also connecting them to a peer navigator for resources based on the person’s needs.
Contact Sayre Wilson ([email protected]) to learn more.
The project aims to address a critical research gap and important public health problem. Chinese American adolescents (CAAs) are at elevated risk for mental health concerns, including depression and suicidal ideation. This public health issue is compounded by the cultural barriers to mental health care experienced by Chinese Americans.
Contact Chieh Li ([email protected]) or visit their webpage to learn more.
WE PLAY stands for Wellness Enhancing Physical Activity for Young Children. This course is designed to provide early childhood educators with tools and support to facilitate active play with preschool children. WE PLAY offers strategies for incorporating physically active play into preschool, including adaptations for children with autism spectrum disorder.
Visit their webpage to learn more.
In partnership with a nonprofit clinic in Knox County, Maine, our interdisciplinary team (from Bouvé and CAMD) is working to identify, design, prototype, and evaluate innovative models of rural community-based care, including mobile health units and organizational and funding models, through a participatory research approach.
Contact Katherine Simmonds ([email protected]) or Sara Carr ([email protected]) to learn more.
Salus Populi: Educating the Judiciary about the Social Determinants of Health is a project in collaboration with the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University School of Law and the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at Northeastern University that seeks to provide guidance and training to judges on the impact of the law on the social determinants of health.
Visit their webpage to learn more.
This study investigates the role of digital media in eating disorder (ED) development and recovery for autistic individuals, focused on addressing high autism rates among those with EDs and the potential negative impact of social media (SM) on body image concerns and EDs for adolescent girls and young women.
Contact Meryl Alper ([email protected]) or Rachel Rodgers ([email protected]) to learn more.
Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this high-level case study provides insight into three local efforts to address racial and other health equity concerns through service alignment and cross-sector collaborations.
The YAB (Youth Advisory Board) is a group of 10 adolescents from the Boston area who share a common goal of addressing health inequity. The YAB meets on a monthly basis to identify relevant health issues, provide feedback, critique CHANGE Lab research initiatives, and facilitate youth-focused research. The CHANGE Lab youth advisory board seeks to create an empowering space that harnesses the perspectives, lived experiences, and imagination that youth possess to help address pediatric health disparities in innovate ways. Our YAB has met monthly since Summer of 2025 engaging in activities around understanding inequities, including communities in engaged research, utilizing Photo Voice to highlight community strengths and inequities, and communicating about Public Health topics through Art, Stories, Letters, and Poetry.
Contact Idia Thurston ([email protected]) or visit their webpage to learn more.
The goal of this project is to identify, design, prototype, and evaluate innovative models of rural, community-based care through a community-based participatory research approach. The project scope includes environmental and service design for facilities and mobile healthcare units, communication strategies, organizational and funding models, and evaluating the impact of these interventions.
Contact Michael Arnold Mages ([email protected]) or visit their website to learn more.
Physical activity is critical for the prevention of pediatric obesity. Active video gaming, or exergaming, represents an innovative approach to increasing physical activity while reducing sedentary screen time. This study examined the effects of narrative-enhanced, home-based active video games among predominantly Black and Hispanic children with overweight or obesity.
Contact Amy Lu ([email protected]) to learn more.
This community-based participatory research project examines how housing conditions, environmental exposures, and lease enforcement practices vary across South Hayward census tracts, and how these patterns align with neighborhood-level displacement vulnerability. Led by Eden Youth and Family Center — a grassroots organization serving South Hayward’s predominantly BIPOC, renter-dense communities since 1977 — the project combines tenant interviews, multi-unit property observations, and spatial analysis of secondary data to produce bilingual tract-level profiles and housing displacement risk maps. Findings will be shared with residents, the Hayward City Council, and local housing agencies to inform equitable implementation of the city’s forthcoming smoke- and vape-free multi-unit housing ordinance.
Contact Miki Hong ([email protected]) or visit their webpage to learn more.
Dr. Shan Mohammed’s work is focused on the public health workforce education through the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH). Dr. Mohammed served as co-chair of an expert panel that created a report entitled Transformative Approaches to Teaching and Learning. Their current work is now disseminating this work and beginning to evaluate how schools and programs in public health are utilizing the report.
Contact Shan Mohammed ([email protected]) to learn more.
National, mixed methods, exploratory study to examine social work practicum education faculty’s perspectives on the state of paid internship/placements available within their CSWE-accredited institutions. This study also explores practicum education faculty’s perception of unpaid internships/placements as an equity and social justice barrier to social work education.
Contact Cali Collin ([email protected]) to learn more.
This NIA-funded mixed-methods study examines audio recordings from educational visits in an RCT that aimed to assist home-bound patients to understand their options among care approaches at the end of life. We will study the perspectives expressed by an ethnically and clinically diverse set of over 130 patients with serious illness. We will then connect themes from these visit conversations to subsequent patient decision-making and service use. Our goal is stronger insight into patients’ priorities and decision processes – and to center these for improved patient-provider communication, tools, and training.
Contact Jeanne Madden ([email protected]) to learn more.
The Research Opportunities and Development through Mentorship in Applied Psychology (ROADMAP) Undergraduate Summer Research Program aims to support students on the path to a career in applied psychology. Through high-quality mentoring, research experience, career development, and graduate school application preparation opportunities, ROADMAP participants will be better equipped with the knowledge and skills to pursue and remain on the path toward success as a researcher, clinician, and/or scientist-practitioner. The ROADMAP Program is concurrently evaluated by a comprehensive program evaluation, co-created with the wonderful team at NU-PEL, specifically tailored to examine outcomes across the areas listed above.
Contact Adrianna Crossing ([email protected]) or visit their website to learn more.
This student-led literature review project explores how cultural humility is conceptualized and practiced across health professions clinical education, including medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, physical therapy, psychology, and dentistry. Drawing on a semi-systematic review of peer-reviewed literature, the project examines educational strategies, provider attitudes, and assessment challenges related to teaching, measuring, and implementing cultural humility. Findings highlight the need for standardized definitions, longitudinal research, and validated, behavior-based assessment tools to support equitable clinical training across disciplines.
Contact Dani Scott ([email protected]) to learn more.
