AnC Leadership

Bettina Hoeppner PhD, MS

Core Lead, Contact PI

I am an Associate Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Health through Flourishing Program (HtF) within the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)’s Department of Psychiatry, and core faculty of the Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research (HPRIR) Center, a joint initiative between the MGH Mongan Institute and the MGH Department of Psychiatry to harness the strengths of interdisciplinary behavioral science delivery research. By training, I am an experimental psychologist focusing on substance use disorder research, with extensive training in statistics. My PI-led research focuses on engagement with auxiliary addiction services (e.g., mutual help, recovery community centers (RCCs)), mHealth technologies, and smoking cessation. The broad aim of my program of research is to increase access to care, especially for underserved, stigmatized and marginalized populations. The type of ‘care’ I specialize in is the auxiliary support people can access outside of the formal treatment setting; care that can support and extend the care they receive in a hospital setting. To this end, I have taken two approaches: (1) my research examines, builds and tests mHealth approaches to support people as they transition away from substance use; and (2) my research elucidates mechanisms by which community resources (e.g., mutual help, recovery community centers) can be leveraged to support recovery from substance use disorder.

My role on this project is to provide guidance on statistics and research methods to RCMAR scholars. I bring to this role my diverse experiences in providing statistical support to a wide range of studies, and, of course, applying what I know to my own PI-led work. Both the treatment development and community engaged focus of this RCMAR align squarely with my own PI-led research (e.g., development of a smartphone app; network building project to advance the science on recovery community centers). My mentoring occurs within the formal context of NIH-funded training programs (see here for my current and past mentees), and through ad hoc consultations across a wide variety of research programs within MGH and beyond. I am particularly invested in supporting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) through my mentoring. I am an active mentor through the Dana-Farber / UMass Boston CURE program, which seeks to provide research training to high school and college students underrepresented in medicine (URIM). Within the MGH Psychiatry Department, I have advocated for and am now leading a new paid undergraduate URIM internship program (2021-present).

Mentoring is an incredibly important piece of my academic life. I bring to my mentoring my values (e.g., inclusion, seeking to diminish health disparities, strength-based approaches, kindness, work-life-balance, scientific rigor), my past experiences. I derive immense joy from seeing my mentees’ successes, and from seeing my current and past mentees networking and helping each other. It takes a village, and my mentees continue to impress me with their kindness towards each other, their achievements, and their vision. I am proud to be part of their journeys.

Benjamin Cook PhD

Co-lead, Contact PI/ MPI

Dr. Cook is Director of the Health Equity Research Laboratory (HERLab) at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) and Contact PI/MPI of a P50 ALACRITY grant from NIH. He will bring his mentoring expertise in guiding trainees with leveraging of claims and electronic health records analyses, big data cleaning, warehousing, and analysis, including merging of datasets across laboratory, services, and neighborhood levels, and statistical analysis and evaluations of digitally-delivered behavioral interventions. Through his work leading HERL, he also has expertise in guiding learners with conceptualization and operationalization of rigorous empirical approaches for measuring disparities in access and quality to services and will assist RCMAR Scientists with these approaches in their ADRD behavioral health research. In addition to his extensive mentoring experience in his lab at CHA, Dr. Cook has an established track record of collaborative mentoring experience, having previously served together for nearly a decade with Mentor Dr. Margarita Alegria and Mass-ENVISION PI Dr. Okereke on the Harvard Medical School (HMS) Psychiatry Research Committee which oversees and monitors, through monthly meetings, the progress of dozens of trainees in 4 HMS-wide mentored fellowship programs for psychiatry residents, psychology interns, fellows and early-career faculty. He has received mentorship awards from NIDA-AACAP and HMS and awards for his work related to measuring racial/ethnic disparities from AcademyHealth and NIMH.