Meet the West Health Accelerator Team: Emma Reidy, MPH
Emma Reidy, MPH, has spent her career helping healthcare teams turn research into meaningful, real-world change.
In her role as a program manager with the West Health Accelerator at Mass General Brigham, Reidy oversees much of the research side of the Accelerator, including outcomes evaluation, implementation science research, and partnerships with teams focused on patient-reported outcome efforts. She also collaborates closely with program manager, Alex McGillivray, MEd, PMP. “I'm very lucky and happy that Alex and I work really well together,” says Reidy. “It’s been nice to toss things back and forth to each other.”
Q&A
How did you come to work on the West Health Accelerator?
Emma Reidy: I’ve been at Mass General Brigham for a while now, initially working in the Center for Surgery and Public Health, which is very research focused. I worked on a number of projects centered on health equity with different investigators. From there, I began working more closely with the Center for Geriatric Surgery, which is much more operationally focused. That work — especially around developing and coordinating the application for Geriatric Surgery Verification with the American College of Surgeons — really shaped how I think about implementing change at scale.
When the Accelerator was just getting started, the team needed additional support as they were shaping what it would become. At first, I was helping by sitting in on meetings, taking notes, and being another set of boots on the ground. As the vision began to take shape and teams were being identified, they asked if I’d be interested in stepping into a formal program manager role. It has been a very natural transition and feels like a good melding of the research, operations and administrative experience that I have. It’s been really fun to put everything together.
What originally drew you to public health?
ER: When I was in eighth or ninth grade, I read Mountains Beyond Mountains about Paul Farmer, and I knew right away that I wanted to be a doctor. Then in college, I had an a-ha moment where I realized that what I really admired about Paul Farmer was his public health work. That’s when I decided to get a master’s degree in public health (MPH).
During my master’s training, I did a lot of HIV treatment and prevention work, including a practicum in Uganda at an HIV treatment clinic. Post-grad, I worked on a CDC-funded grant in Chicago to implement HIV prevention programs across the city. Those experiences gave me a lot of experience with research, but also with working directly with patients and thinking about how programs work in the real world, outside of what we can design in a PowerPoint. I think having worked across a number of different research programs over the years and thinking through different patient populations has given me a lot of appreciation for patient-serving work.
How would you describe the Accelerator’s team culture?
ER: I love working on this team because it’s such a collaborative group. I’ve worked with Zara, Rachelle, Lynne, Amy and other members of this team for a long time, so there’s a shared history and a lot of trust. Everyone has different strengths that we respect and appreciate in each other. I am confident when I don’t have a certain skill or asset someone else on the team does, and together we can ensure nothing is overlooked. It's just so easy to work with this team, and I think that’s pretty rare.
What excites you most right now about the Accelerator’s work?
ER: We recently released our first phase of Epic-related work, and we’ve onboarded a new data analyst, so we’ll begin to start seeing our results over the next few months. I think we’re going to see a lot of changes resulting from our work! I’m excited and optimistic about the data.