Innovations in immigrant mental health

Margaret (Maggie) Sullivan is an Instructor and Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Program on Immigrants and Unhoused Communities, a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academies of Practice (NAP) in Nursing, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN). She is a nationally board-certified family nurse practitioner dedicated to serving immigrant communities, especially those with precarious documentation status or at risk of homelessness. Maggie co-leads the Partnership for Community Mental Health and Immigrant Well-being with her colleague, Jocelyn Chu, a project which aims to examine the mental healthcare landscape in Massachusetts and learn from immigrant-led, culturally rooted, community-based approaches to mental health. She co-advises the Harvard Students Human Rights Collaborative (HSHRC) and conducts forensic medical evaluations for asylum with Harvard Medical School’s Asylum Clinic. In collaboration with the Initiative on Health & Homelessness, Maggie co-developed and co-teaches HPM 523: Homelessness and Health: Lessons from Health Care, Public Health, and Research.

Rachel Plummer is the Associate Director at Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee (CEOC), Cambridge’s anti-poverty nonprofit. Rachel has been working at CEOC for 4 years. She began as a graduate student intern at CEOC during her Master of Public Health program at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Before working at CEOC, she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital in clinical research related to addiction medicine. Rachel’s current position at CEOC touches all of CEOC’s program areas with a particular focus on food insecurity and mental health. She leads the agency’s community-based mental health program, where non-clinicians deliver a 5-session mental health intervention. Rachel is deeply committed to hearing and centering the voices of community members and incorporating those voices in programmatic and policy decision making.

Jake Savage, is the Library Social Worker at Somerville Public Library. A Somerville resident with a background in immigrant and refugee health, he is passionate about increasing equity in the community through advocacy, programming, and access to resources and information. He also loves to read, hike, and solve crossword puzzles!