Mass EQLHS Student Scholars
Medical Students
Chris Alba, MD Candidate
Harvard Medical School
Chris graduated from Yale College in 2020 with a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Economics. He then spent two years at the Massachusetts General Hospital Medical Practice Evaluation Center performing cost-effectiveness analyses of domestic and global public health interventions. At Harvard Medical School, Chris has continued to contribute to public health and health policy-relevant research, focusing on preventive screenings, vaccine safety, and social drivers of health. As part of Mass EQLHS, Chris is interested in improving healthcare delivery and care access for all populations.
Christiana Oshotse, MD/MBA Candidate
Harvard Medical School & Harvard Business School
Christiana graduated from Duke University in 2019 with a B.A. in Public Policy Studies and a minor in Chemistry. At Duke, she conducted research on health behaviors including medication adherence improvement strategies and economic empowerment for all populations, including an independent study on microfinance and women’s economic capabilities in rural Nigeria. She subsequently worked on clinical trials and health policy research at Emory University and the Georgia Health Policy Research Center, employing qualitative and quantitative methods to inform state-level COVID-19 response strategies and cross-sector health equity initiatives.
As an MD/MBA candidate at Harvard Medical School & Harvard Business School, Christiana’s research focuses on improving access to neurosurgical care and neurotechnologies for all populations. She co-developed the concept of “Neurotech Justice”, applied data-driven analyses to clinical and market datasets, and co-authored publications shaping ethical frameworks for neurotechnology deployment. She also contributed to the creation of HMS’s Healthcare Leadership & Transformation Track, leveraging her research and policy expertise to guide program strategy. Her work has been recognized through awards including the Dennis Washington Leadership Scholarship and the ASCO Medical Student Grant.
As a Mass EQLHS Student Scholar, Christiana is committed to collaborating and integrating her experience in clinical care, health policy, and system-level interventions to improve access to healthcare and medical innovations.
Dahlia Luongo, MD Candidate
Harvard Medical School
Dahlia graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University in 2023 with a B.A. in Medical Anthropology. She then spent two years at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City, joining the Department of Emergency Medicine as the Program Coordinator of its Division of Health Equity. In this role, Dahlia developed and piloted eight health quality improvement initiatives — most notably the department’s first-ever food insecurity screening program — across three emergency department locations, while also directing four high-volume volunteer programs. At Harvard Medical School, Dahlia serves as a Coordinator of the OCCME’s Housing & Neighborhood Development Group, and as part of Mass EQLHS, she seeks to evaluate how health systems science can be used to tackle large-scale differences in care access and outcomes across health systems.
Sehej Parmar, MD/MPH Candidate
Harvard Medical School & School of Public Health
Sehej was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and completed her undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins, earning a degree in Molecular & Cellular Biology and Public Health. Throughout her time in Tulsa and Baltimore, she worked with community-based organizations addressing social determinants of health in underserved populations—serving as a Community Impact Fellow with Baltimore Youth Arts to support youth affected by the criminal justice system, advocating for low-income families with Health Leads, and providing harm reduction and sexual health outreach with H.O.P.E. Testing. These experiences deepened her understanding of how sociocultural and economic factors shape health outcomes, inspiring her to pursue a career bridging individual care to population-level impact. She is currently pursuing her MD at Harvard Medical School and MPH in Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As a member of Mass EQLHS, Sehej is excited to work at the intersection of medicine, health policy, and health systems innovation, reimagining how care can extend beyond hospital walls and into communities.
Sein Lee, MD Candidate
Harvard Medical School
Sein is a first-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. She graduated from Yale College with a double B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. At Yale, she volunteered with the HAVEN Free Clinic to support primary care services for uninsured and underinsured Connecticut residents, an experience that sparked her interest in addressing barriers that shape patient outcomes. Since then, Sein’s work has spanned research, policy, and clinical care, from advocating at the United Nations, serving as a policy intern at the National Institutes of Health, and coordinating a quality improvement study at Penn Medicine. As a Mass EQLHS Scholar, Sein is examining drivers of hospital discharge delays, with particular attention to the complications arising from insurance, institutional policies, and behavioral health needs. Through her work, Sein hopes to advance patient-centered healthcare delivery across clinical and policy settings.
Erica Langan, MD/PhD Candidate
Harvard-MIT MD-PhD Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST)
Erica graduated from Duke University in 2022 with a B.S. in Biology and Minor in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. She then worked for a year as a research assistant at Boston Children’s Hospital before joining the Harvard-MIT MD-PhD program in 2023 as part of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST). She is now working towards her PhD in Immunology at Harvard Medical School, studying the impacts of early life environmental exposures and viral infections on the development of chronic airway disease. As a member of Mass EQLHS, she is excited to explore ways in which environmental exposure data can be integrated into the clinical workflow to better inform patient care and improve outcomes.
Grace Lee, MD Candidate
Harvard Medical School
Grace graduated from Duke University in 2023 with a B.S. in Neuroscience and certificate in Child Policy Research. At Duke, she led a program that leveraged student volunteers to screen and refer patients to resources for their health-related social needs. She led the program’s expansion to the Duke Health system and worked on North Carolina’s Healthy Opportunities Pilot, a statewide pilot to innovate social needs resource reimbursement. At Harvard, she is the VP of Community Health and Action, and as a member of Mass EQLHS, is dedicated to promoting healthcare access, preventive care, and social and medical care integration.
DORSA MOSLEHI, MD Candidate
Harvard Medical School
Dorsa graduated in 2021 from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in Public Health. During her time at UC Berkeley, she was a member of the Fung Fellowship, where she leveraged human-centered design, community-based participatory research, and digital technology to solve public health challenges facing underserved populations often excluded from health innovations. As a current MD candidate at Harvard Medical School and member of Mass EQLHS, her goal is to explore HCD’s potential role in enhancing patient and public engagement in LHS to address gaps in health innovation and healthcare delivery.
UNDERGRADUATES
Annika Krovi, AB Candidate
Harvard College
Annika is a sophomore at Harvard University studying Social Studies with a focus in Public Health, a secondary in Economics, and a Spanish citation. Her work focuses on leveraging the law and policymaking to build healthier and safer communities. She has previously conducted research on the impact of social safety net policies on food security, rural health accessibility, and childhood injury prevention. Annika has also been a passionate advocate for healthcare improvement at the local, state, and national level, including as a youth organizer for firearm safety. At Mass EQLHS, Annika is interested in researching how to build a community-centered health system that meaningfully engages and serves patients.
Keneil Soni, AB Candidate
Harvard College
Keneil is a senior at Harvard College from Long Island, NY, studying Neuroscience with a secondary in Economics. Through coursework and consulting with Harvard Undergraduate Consulting on Business and the Environment (HUCBE), he has become interested in how data and evidence can translate scientific insight into strategies that strengthen care delivery and improve health outcomes. Prior to joining Mass EQLHS, Keneil conducted Alzheimer’s disease research at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studied microglial biology and amyloid pathology. He is also involved in clinical service and leadership through CrimsonEMS and the Surgery Interest Group, supporting hands-on learning and mentorship for premedical students.
Residents, Fellows, & POstDocs
Mawra Jha, MBBS
Learning Health System Research Fellow, Mass EQLHS
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cardiovascular Imaging, Mass General Brigham
Mawra is a Learning Health System Research Fellow at Mass EQLHS and a postdoctoral fellow in cardiovascular imaging at Mass General Brigham. Her research focuses on advanced cardiac MRI and vascular aging. She has previously worked with the Framingham Heart Study and Jackson Heart Study, examining how lifestyle and behavioral factors influence arterial stiffness and long-term cardiovascular risk. She is also the founder of MAMTA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving metabolic health literacy in rural India. Through MAMTA, she leads community-based initiatives such as promoting continuous home blood-pressure monitoring in villages without access to BP devices, increasing awareness of metabolic diseases, and addressing barriers to health-seeking behavior. At Mass EQLHS, Mawra is interested in understanding how investigators meaningfully engage patient partners in research. Her work emphasizes human-centered design, co-production, and approaches that ensure patient perspectives drive innovation within learning health systems.
SAHIL SANDHU, MD, MSc
Resident, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Sahil is a recent MD graduate from Harvard Medical School, a Samvid Scholar alumni, and is currently a resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also a Foster Scholar at the Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed his self-designed bachelor’s degree in health innovation at Duke University. He studied the use of evidence-based practice to design, implement, and evaluate new health innovations, from artificial intelligence tools to new value-based payment models. While at Duke, he founded a community resource navigator program to help patients connect to resources for their social needs such food insecurity and housing instability. He then completed his master’s in health services research at Newcastle University as a US-UK Fulbright Scholar, where he evaluated social prescribing models to integrate health and social services. At Harvard Medical School, he continued to lead research and policy projects on healthcare strategies to improve healthcare outcomes for all. His work has resulted in over three dozen publications in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and JAMA Internal Medicine. Working at the intersection of clinical medicine, care delivery transformation, and health policy, Sahil aspires to become a physician committed to building a stronger healthcare system.
Students assisting faculty scholars
ROYA AHMADI, BS Candidate
Assisting Dr. Sarrah Shahawy
Roya Ahmadi is a senior at Stanford University studying Human Biology with a self-designed concentration in Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Women's Health and a minor in Interdisciplinary Arts. Her primary interests are in Muslim and SWANA women's sexual and reproductive health and culturally and religiously sensitive pregnancy care. Roya has interned with Motherbeing, a Cairo, Egypt based women's health platform delivering context-tailored sexual and reproductive health education to MENA women through a mobile application and AI chat assistant that speaks different Arabic dialects. Roya is also a co-chair for the Stanford Institute for the Arts Fellowship and a video and sound installation artist who has presented work in group shows across the US.
Nadiha Noor Chelsea, MB, BCh, BAO
Assisting Dr. Sarrah Shahawy
Nadiha Noor Chelsea is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) with a medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). As a Bangladeshi-born Canadian, she has witnessed firsthand that there’s room for improvement in women's health. Her research interests are focused on improving women’s healthcare outcomes. She is especially committed to exploring and implementing strategies that empower women to navigate healthcare systems, ensuring they receive high-quality care.
Lobna Raya, MSEd
Assisting Dr. Sarrah Shahawy
Lobna graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Religious Studies and a minor in Bioethics. Following her undergraduate studies, she joined Teach For America, where she taught high school students and earned her Master of Science in Education from Johns Hopkins University. With a passion for both medicine and education, she aims to improve healthcare outcomes by leveraging her unique background and experiences in education and bioethics.
Sarah Pitafi, BA, MA, MD Candidate
Assisting Dr. Sarrah Shahaway
Sarah graduated from Yale College in 2022 with a degree in Ethics, Politics, and Economics. At Yale, she was a clinical research coordinator for the COPPER Cancer Center, where she aided in the development of standardized tools to better connect low-income ovarian cancer survivors with community resources. She then received a Fulbright scholarship to attend University College London and obtained a masters in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics of Health. At Harvard Medical School, Sarah works alongside community organizations like Saheli to increase improve access to healthcare in South Asian and Arab communities. As a member of Mass EQLHS, she is interested in investigating the factors that are most important in health decision-making for women of all backgrounds.
Neirja Mehta, BS
Assisting Dr. Sarrah Shahaway
Neirja recently graduated from Northeastern University with a B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience. Curious about understanding the clinical aspects of women’s health, Neirja is currently working as a Medical Secretary/Assistant at an Outpatient OB/GYN Medical Clinic, with plans to pursue medical school in the future. Through participation in the MeRGE Lab, she is excited to learn more about the role of religion and culture in maternal and reproductive health outcomes.
Elizabeth DaCunha, BA Candidate
Assisting Dr. Sarrah Shahaway
Elizabeth is a sophomore at Harvard University studying Anthropology and Medicine with a secondary in Global Health and Health Policy. She is a student researcher with the MeRGE Lab, where she contributes to research at the intersection of gender and health. Her prior work includes advancing menstrual initiatives in Tanzania, supporting women’s health programs in Boston, and contributing to cancer research at the SouthCoast Cancer Center. Elizabeth is also currently involved in health advocacy and community engagement through Partners in Health Engage, Women’s Fund SouthCoast, and the Girl Up New England Coalition. Her academic and advocacy interests center on women’s health and global health.
Shreetoma Subrata Datta, MBBS
Assisting Dr. Sarrah Shahawy
Shreetoma Datta is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She earned her medical degree in Pune, India, where she held leadership roles in student research and national medical organizations. She is currently preparing to pursue residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology in the United States.
Her research focuses on maternal and reproductive health, with peer-reviewed publications on pregnancy outcomes in COVID-19, minimally invasive myomectomy, breastfeeding among people with HIV, and the multicenter PLACID Trial. She also completed research electives at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in HIV in pregnancy and reproductive endocrinology. Through her work with Mass EQLHS and the MERGE Research Lab, Shreetoma now seeks to identify the social, clinical, and contextual factors that guide health decision-making for women from all backgrounds.
Trishathi Malagar Nandakumar, BDS, MPH
Assisting Dr. Rose Olson
Trishathi is a public health researcher with training in epidemiology, biostatistics, and dentistry. She holds an MPH from the Boston University School of Public Health and a dental degree from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) in India. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, she works with Dr. Rose Olson in the Department of Internal Medicine and Dr. Ingrid Katz in the Division of Women’s Health, contributing to studies on emergency department (ED) boarding. Her research interests focus on improving access to medical and oral healthcare and implementing effective interventions in real-world settings.
Zoe Burkhart, BA
Assisting Dr. Rose Olson
Zoe graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2024 with a B.A. in Public Health. Her research focuses on women’s health and the differences in healthcare outcomes faced by all communities. She is particularly interested in understanding women’s long-term health complications. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Zoe is committed to improving healthcare delivery and passionate about healthcare policy’s role in improving access to healthcare.