Meet the People of the Irsay

Biography

Margarita Alegría, PhD is the Chief of the Disparities Research Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital and The Mongan Institute, the Harry G. Lehnert, Jr. and Lucille F. Cyr Lehnert Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair and a Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Alegría is currently the PI of three National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded research studies: Building Infrastructure for Community Capacity in Accelerating Integrated Care; Building Community Capacity for Disability Prevention for Minority Elders; and Latino Youth Coping with Discrimination: A Multi-Level Investigation in Micro- and Macro-Time. She is also PI of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant assessing opportunities to establish institutional, policy, and systemic changes to increase racial/ethnic diversity in academic health sciences. Dr. Alegría has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, and several book chapters, on topics such as improvement of health care services delivery for diverse racial and ethnic populations, conceptual and methodological issues with multicultural populations and ways to bring the community’s perspective into the design and implementation of health services.

In acknowledgement of her contributions to her field, Dr. Alegría has been widely recognized and cited. Her research has been recognized by the Simon Bolivar Award by the American Psychiatry Association, the Carl Taube Award by the American Public Health Association, and the Health Disparities Innovation Award from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities. In October 2011, she was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Most recently, Dr. Alegría received the 2022 Inclusive Voices Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research and the 2022 Outstanding Mentor of Underrepresented in Medicine Award from the Massachusetts General Hospital.