Center Director

Alexandra E. Shields, PhD

Core Faculty

Douglas E. Levy, PhD

Mehdi Najafzadeh, MSc, MA, PhD Candidate

Research Staff

Anna B. Schachter, MPH
Project Manager

Marcelo Cerullo, AB
Research Assistant

Carly Hudelson, AB
Research Assistant

Related Centers

The Mongan Institute for Health Policy
The Mongan Institute for Health Policy (the institutional home of the Harvard/MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations, and Health Disparities) is a leading force for beneficial change in health policy, clinical care, and the health care delivery system. Founded by Partners HealthCare System and Massachusetts General Hospital in 1998, the Institute conducts research to support quality and efficiency improvement within Partners HealthCare, to inform and influence health policy on the national level, and more broadly, to improve health and health care across America and in other nations worldwide.

Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program
The National Human Genome Research Institute's (NHGRI) Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program was established in 1990 as an integral part of the Human Genome Project (HGP) to foster basic and applied research on the ethical, legal and social implications of genetic and genomic research for individuals, families and communities.

Harvard Catalyst | The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center
The Harvard Catalyst is dedicated to improving human health by enabling collaboration and providing tools, training and technologies to clinical and translational investigators. Dr. Shields is Co-Director of the Catalyst's Health Disparities Research Program, which strives to increase the prominence and impact of research on health disparities at Harvard.

Broad Institute
The Broad Institute is committed to meeting the most critical challenges in biology and medicine. Broad scientists pursue a wide variety of projects that cut across scientific disciplines and institutions. Collectively, these projects aim to: Assemble a complete picture of the molecular components of life; Define the biological circuits that underlie cellular responses; Uncover the molecular basis of major inherited diseases; Unearth all the mutations that underlie different cancer types; Discover the molecular basis of major infectious diseases; and Transform the process of therapeutic discovery and development.

Harvard Lung Cancer Disparities Center: Jointly Addressing Race and Socioeconomic Status
The Lung Cancer Disparities Center is an interdisciplinary center for research, including community-based participatory research, core support, and dissemination activities focused on understanding and altering the determinants of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) disparities along the continuum of lung cancer.

Harvard Transdisciplinary Research in Energetics and Cancer Center (TREC)
The Harvard TREC Center is a NCI-funded research center focused on investigating the relationship between obesity and cancer by integrating the study of diet, weight, and physical activity and exploring these effects on energy balance and cancer incidence and survival. The Center is designed to increase the understanding of the determinants of obesity from the molecular to societal level and across the lifespan, to clarify the biological links of obesity with cancer risk and survivorship, to translate these findings into actionable behavioral interventions, to train the next generation of investigators in energetics (the study of energy balance) and cancer, and to disseminate this knowledge and develop public health strategies to reduce risk of obesity and cancer.

PhenX (consensus measures for Phenotypes and eXposures)
Led by RTI International, in collaboration with the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), PhenX is an initiative to help integrate genetics and epidemiological research by providing investigators with high-quality, relatively low-burden measures for inclusion in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and other large-scale research efforts.

Center for Comparative Effectiveness in Genomic Medicine (CEGeM)
The Center for Comparative Effectiveness in Genomic Medicine (CEGeM) is a coordinated, multidisciplinary center housed within the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The mission of CEGeM is the generation and synthesis of evidence to support the translation of genomic tools/markers into improvements in cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship.