Adolescent Medicine Investigators and Current Research Projects

Division Chief:  Amy DiVasta, MD, MMSc

Associate Chief:  Sara Forman, MD

 

Jessica Addison, MD, MS, MPH

  • HIV/PrEP/doxyPeP: Dr. Addison is examining the process of implementing a doxyPEP clinical pathway in an adolescent/young adult clinic. She is also looking at adherence to PrEP in adolescents and young adults in order to learn more about challenges to adhering to this intervention.
  • STI/Expedited partner therapy: Dr. Addison is working with the STI QI working group examining rates of expedited partner treatment.
  • Examining popular vulvovaginal trends and impact of social media on health behaviors among adolescent/young adult population

S. Bryn Austin, ScD

  • Sexual and gender minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth) health. With a series of studies, Dr. Austin is examining the causes and consequences of disparities in health outcomes such as eating disorders, obesity, alcohol use, and smoking adversely affecting sexual and gender minority youth and adults. Her projects range from biological studies of stress response to abuse and discrimination to policy studies of the effects of discrimination on economic outcomes and quality adjusted life years. www.hsph.harvard.edu/sogie

Ariel Beccia, PhD

  • Eating disorder inequities: Ariel Beccia is leading a series of studies focused on identifying the distribution and determinants of eating disorder inequities affecting marginalized youth populations, including LGBTQ+ youth, youth of color, and youth from low-income backgrounds. These projects use a variety of epidemiologic datasets and take a structural approach by looking at how laws and policies, institutional practices, and cultural norms and attitudes drive risk. Opportunities are available to be involved with literature reviews, table and figure making, and manuscript writing/editing.

David S. Bickham, PhD, LEAH Director of Research Training

  • Media and depression. Dr. Bickham studies links between media use and mental health including work that showed that young adolescents’ cell phone use predicted increases in symptoms of depression. Results from his study using Ecological Momentary Assessment have identified how characteristics of the individual and the communication moment contribute to the impact of social media use on adolescents’ affect. 
  • Problematic Interactive Media Use (PIMU).  In collaboration with other members of the CIMAID (Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders) team, Dr. Bickham is conducting research to identify key risk factors of PIMU by investigating common characteristics among CIMAID patients.  He and the team are currently developing research questions and protocols to examine the effectiveness of newly designed manualized treatment for treating young people suffering from PIMU. 
  • Children’s play and media use. Dr. Bickham directed a longitudinal study in the US and Mexico that examined how children’s play is linked to their media use and their healthy development. This work used Ecological Momentary Sampling and other techniques to assess play in children’s real life to help determine if media use is replacing play and how children’s health and development might be impacted. 
  • Media and obesity. Dr. Bickham studies the different pathways linking electronic media use to obesity among children and adolescents.  His work examines how digital advertising can influence children’s food choice, how attending to television is linked to obesity, and how reducing media use can enhance physical activity and sleep.
  • Longitudinal impact of media use on health. Using various existing databases, Dr. Bickham investigates various adolescent health consequences of early media use including aggression and risky sexual behaviors.
  • Dating apps and sexual risk behaviors.  Dr. Bickham is currently fielding a study examining links between dating app use, depression, and sexual risk behaviors among emerging adults.  This work will help answer whether mental health issues increase the risk of dating app use contributing to sexual risk behaviors.  

Joshua Borus, MD, MPH

  • Educational Research Opportunities: There are many opportunities to participate in projects related to adolescent education and evaluation of residents.  Some projects are ready to go and need person-power to convert a good idea into reality, also excited to hear about what might be exciting to you.
  • Quality Improvement: Quality Improvement efforts generate lots of data and opportunities to reflect on the care we provide. Recent projects have looked at potential disparities in the patient experience amongst different groups within our clinic, referral completion, immunizations, transitions to adult care, asthma care, STI testing rates, Depression follow up and many others.  There are exciting projects which have data and need person-power to explore further--is chlamydia treatment with doxy as good in real life as azithro?  how can we help patients access PAP smears? Does following up ED visits result in better care for our patients? What happens to patients with high scores on our GAD-7 or PHQ-9 screeners? many others!-- which could be easily turned into academic products.

Amy DiVasta MD, MMSc

  • Boston Center for Endometriosis: Working together with researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, our team is compiling the largest database and biorepository of adolescents and young adults with endometriosis in the United States. We will utilize these data to learn more about the etiology of endometriosis, appropriate therapies, and prognostic information for the future. Dr. DiVasta is also conducting active clinical trials investigating new non-hormonal therapies for endometriosis. We now have 7+ years of longitudinal data on both young people with and without endometriosis, including information on nutritional status, pain, exercise, health history, medication use. We also have stored serum samples on n=30 young women with endometriosis who were treated with a GnRH agonist, and data regarding their clinical outcomes, hormonal levels, etc. during participation in a one year clinical trial.
  • Reproductive Endocrine: Drs. DiVasta and Pitts are involved in a multi site, national project exploring future health outcomess of our AYA with PCOS, and to determine whether treatments utilized during adolescence impact these outcomes. Opportunities exist for collaboration on pilot studies to explore renal disease in adolescents with PCOS, bone health in patients using spironolactone, and pharmacology of norethindrone acetate use in adolescents.
  • Eating Disorders: Dr. DiVasta previously conducted a clinical trial of a vibrating platform for use in preventing bone health complications of anorexia, both during hospitalization as well as in the outpatient setting. There is an opportunity to launch a new clinical study of our inpatients, particularly now that our length of stay is longer than previous. Additionally, there is a completed but yet-to-be-analyzed project exploring the use of nuclear medicine PET scans to evaluate malnutrition in adolescents hospitalized for AN, a rat model of starvation and PET/CT changes, and a rich database of nutritional information/hormonal measures in a cohort of adolescents with anorexia participating in a clinical trial for 6 months.

Shannon Fitzgerald MD MPH

  • MICON/adolescent pregnancy QI – part of a team in the adolescent clinic providing outreach and coordination for our patients with positive pregnancy tests. We also collect data as a part of a QI effort to ensure appropriate and timely follow up.  Through the MICON team, we also are reviewing rates of anxiety and/or depressive symptoms in newly pregnant patients as well improving mental health screening. We are also looking into improving STD testing rates for these patients. 
  • PCOS – part of a team looking into long term effects of PCOS and different treatment options for people who have PCOS. We are currently collecting data from prior patients to review their trajectory with PCOS. 

Sara Forman, MD

  • Accountable Care Organization: Sara Forman also directs the ACO for BCH for the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine. The ACO has supported efforts for Care coordination in Complex care, behavioral health and social determinants of health. Quality data within our division have been collected on our priority areas, and is available for individuals to review.

Shivani Gaiha, PhD

Dr. Gaiha’s research informing tobacco prevention and regulation and developing and evaluating interventions to improve the health of adolescents and young adults (AYAs). There are 4 opportunities:

  •  Qualitative research exploring whether influencer videos can be used in a health education setting as prompts for discussion on e-cigarette marketing,
  • Survey development and fielding to evaluate the effects of AI-generated facts on e-cigarette and nicotine pouch prevention, and
  • Supporting a study to evaluate the feasibility of young adults using smartphone photography to conduct retail marketing audits.
  • Qualitative participatory action research to examine barriers and facilitators in providing vaping prevention and cessation services at school-based health centers in Greater Boston

Carly Guss, MD, MPH

  • Dr. Guss has a NIH-funded career development award study to improve HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) counseling and prescribing in pediatric primary care settings. This is a mixed-methods study that incorporates qualitative methods and adaptation of an intervention that will be tested in a pilot clinical trial. 

Sion Kim Harris, PhD, CPH

  • Teen substance use screening, prevention, and brief intervention research: Dr. Harris has been conducting research in this area for over 20 years, and was instrumental in the initial validation of the CRAFFT, now the most widely used, brief, developmentally-appropriate screening tool for identifying problematic substance use among adolescents. She developed the updated CRAFFT 2.1+N version which includes improvements based on ongoing research with CRAFFT, and now includes screening for nicotine use disorder. She has completed multiple NIH-funded trials testing adolescent substance use screening and brief intervention approaches in pediatric primary care offices and school-based health centers. Data collection was recently completed in a multi-site trial in 4 U.S. states of computer-facilitated screening and brief intervention conducted in partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics.
  • Building character strengths/resilience among youth in Zambia to prevent problematic substance use: Dr. Harris is collaborating with a multi-national team to conduct research on a positive youth development approach to preventing/reducing youth substance use, HIV risk behavior, and mental health problems among youth in Zambia, a country with early initiation of alcohol and drug use among youth and high HIV prevalence. Specifically, this research involves developing and testing curricula that aims to build character strengths, such as forgiveness, optimism, gratitude, spirituality, and psychological resilience in at-risk youth.

Areej Hassan, MD, MPH

  • Currently working with international colleagues abroad in India (transgender care, availability of adolescent health services) as well Guatemala (adolescent health services, adolescent medical education) with end goal of creating sustainable adolescent medicine programming and policy changes to increase access to services
  • Examining Popular vulvovaginal trends and impact of social media on health behaviors among adolescent/young adult population

Grace Jhe, PhD

  • Atypical Anorexia Nervosa: Co-PI on exploring youth’s, caregivers’, and providers’ attitudes toward weight restoration for adolescents with atypical anorexia nervosa.
  • CBT phone app study (“RxWell” study): Co-I on the randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of a digital mental health intervention embedded in routine care compared to treatment as usual in adolescents and young adults with moderate depressive symptoms
  • Current QI Project: Evaluating the prevalence of traumatic stressors in AYAM population and implementing a consistent use of trauma measures

Sabra L. Katz-Wise, PhD

  • Plurisexual health. Dr. Katz-Wise is the Principal Investigator of an NIH-funded study to understand experiences of stigma and mental and behavioral health among adolescents and young adults who have attractions to multiple genders and/or identify as bisexual, pansexual, queer, or a similar identity. Opportunities are available to be involved with qualitative data analysis and manuscript writing for this project.

Jill Kavanaugh, MLIS, AHIP

  • Artificial Intelligence in Health Care and Research: Jill’s recent work includes published scholarship and educational initiatives focused on the responsible use of generative AI in health and research. She helps lead Department of Pediatrics efforts to build AI literacy, evaluate AI-supported workflows, and support quality improvement projects related to AI-based clinical documentation.
  • Social Media, Algorithmic Harm, and Youth Health: Jill contributes to interdisciplinary projects examining how social media platform design, algorithmic systems, influencer marketing, and digital environments affect adolescent health and body image. Her work includes legal and policy research to support judicial education, legislative advocacy, and public health translation related to algorithm accountability, social media transparency, platform design, and digital harm.
  • Eating Disorders Prevention and Public Health Surveillance: Jill’s work with STRIPED focuses on translating eating disorders prevention research into usable resources for public health, policy, and clinical audiences. She supports projects related to youth eating disorder/disordered eating behavior surveillance, including efforts to improve the consistency, accessibility, and implementation of ED/DEB measures in youth health surveys.
  • Health Literacy and Information Access: Jill’s research and educational interests include adolescent health literacy, online health information-seeking, misinformation, and the role of librarians in helping youth, families, clinicians, and public health professionals access accurate and understandable health information.

Pamela J Murray, MD, MHP

  • Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Orthostatic Intolerance: Participated in RCT of Larazotide for treatment of Long-COVID/CFS (recruitment completed). Anticipate developing a protocol to assess and follow patients with chronic fatigue, ‘brain fog’, POTS, orthostatic intolerance and Long- COVID presentations.
  • Making Healthy Decisions: Integrated Group-Individual Curriculum to Prevent Teen Pregnancy with Julie Downs, PhD (CMU): Multisite randomized clinical trial of an integrated teen pregnancy prevention interactive video intervention and classroom curricular materials delivered to at risk teen girls in groups compared to control (healthy eating) interventions in geographically diverse communities. Effectiveness to decrease rates of teen pregnancy, increase contraceptive and condom use and improve self-efficacy around these behaviors are being evaluated. Evaluating primary and secondary outcomes.
  • Emergency Contraception Access on College Campuses: Mentor/Co-PI for Amie Ashcraft, WVU; Assessment of emergency contraception access at tertiary care institutions with patient-simulated phone calls, building on project assessing EC access in community pharmacies in West Virginia. 
  • PCOS Long-term follow-up: with Amy DiVasta and Shannon Fitzgerald, BCH: Review of long-term follow-up data from existing BCH AYAM/Gyn database.

Sarah Pitts, MD, Medical Fellowship Leadership, LEAH Program Director

  • Medical Education. Dr. Pitts is an Adolescent Medicine representative on APPD SPIN, a collaborative of fellowship program directors across pediatric subspecialties engaging in research. Med Ed research proposals can be submitted to APPD SPIN. She is conducting a qualitative study of 3rd year pediatric subspecialty fellows regarding the benefits/drawbacks of their 3rd year of training.
  • PMOS: Dr. Pitts is involved in CALICO, a national research consortium assessing the clinical experience and health trajectories of adolescents/young adults with PMOS.

Michael Rich MD, MPH, is the Founder and Director of the Digital Wellness Lab (digitalwellnesslab.org) which is on a mission to understand and promote positive and healthy digital media experiences for young people, from birth through young adulthood. Dr. Rich is also the Founder and Co-Director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders (CIMAID) (https://digitalwellnesslab.org/cimaid/), the first evidence-based clinical program designed to address Problematic Interactive Media Use (PIMU) in children, adolescents, and young adults. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Dr. Rich works with young people and their families to help them to adopt and sustain healthy approaches to engaging with interactive media and technology. 

Dr. Rich has developed innovative media-based research methodologies, including Video Intervention/Prevention Assessment (VIA) and Measurement of Youth Media Exposure (MYME). Having served as PI on research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and foundations in the United States and Canada, Dr. Rich is currently leading projects investigating how young people engage with diverse interactive online environments, and how we can mitigate negative effects of these engagements while maximizing potentially positive effects. 

An Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Associate Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Dr. Rich has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed research papers, 40 book chapters and research reports, pediatric practice policies, and testified to the US Congress and other policymakers about his research findings. In 2024, he published a book drawing from his decades of clinical practice and research, The Pediatrician’s Guide: A Joyful Approach to Raising Healthy, Smart, Kind Kids in a Screen-Saturated World.  His research innovation has been honored with awards from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, and he has served as Visiting Professor at medical schools and universities around the globe.

Tracy Richmond, MD, MPH

Dr. Richmond is interested in weight-related disorders as well as macrosocial influences on health.

  • **The Registry of Eating disorders and their Co-morbidities OVER time in Youth (RECOVERY) RECOVERY is a longitudinal registry of patients with eating disorders. Participants completed web-based surveys semi-annually including validated measures of eating disordered cognitions and behaviors, depression and anxiety. Additionally, parents and clinicians provided assessments re: the patient’s recovery and treatment. 3 years’ worth of data are collected.
  • **Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder: Dr. Richmond is the Co-Director of the ARFID Program, a multi-disciplinary program that is a collaboration between the Divisions of Gastroenterology and Adolescent Medicine. The ARFID program collects detailed information regarding development as well as validated measures that capture ARFID-related behaviors. 
  • **Weight stigma: Dr.Richmond, with Drs. Idia Thurston and Kendrin Sonneville, conduct studies examining the impact of weight perception, body satisfaction, and internalization of weight-related stigma on health-related outcomes in youth with overweight/obesity. They have used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health as well as the WRAP study, a primary data collection from a cohort of youth attending a MidSouth university.
  • Dieting and social contexts: Examining the impact of multiple social contexts (schools and peer networks) on weight perception and dieting behaviors.
  • **Weight trajectories: Determining sensitive periods in BMI trajectories in youth with severe v. non-severe obesity and their genetic predictors. Dr. Richmond will be applying similar techniques to a population with anorexia nervosa and ARFID.

**readily available data to be analyzed

Lydia A. Shrier, MD, MPH, Research Director for the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine and Co-Director (with Dr. Sion Harris) of the Center for Adolescent Behavioral Health Research.

  • Intervening on health risk behaviors in life context. Dr. Shrier uses mobile technology and ecological momentary assessment methodology to assess and intervene on sexual and drug use behaviors and mental health states in youth in real-life contexts. Her projects include
    • evaluating the feasibility of MOMENT-V, a fully remote counseling-plus-mhealth intervention to reduce cannabis use in young adults who use frequently, funded by NIH
    • evaluating the efficacy of MARSSI, a motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral skill intervention to reduce sexual risk behaviors in high-risk young women with depressive symptoms - **data available for analysis**
  • Substance use screening and brief intervention in primary care. Dr. Shrier is multiple principal investigator (with Dr. Harris) for two NIH-funded studies,
    • evaluating the efficacy of the computer-facilitated Screening and clinician Brief Intervention system in a multisite cluster randomized controlled trial among adolescent patients of pediatric primary care, which was implemented in pediatric practices in the AAP’s Pediatric Research in Office Setting (PROS) network - supplemental study of sexual and gender minority youth and social determinants of health - **data available for analysis**
    • evaluating integration of the computerized Screening and provider Brief Advice system for adolescent substance use and the CHADIS online clinical process support system for pediatric primary care - **data available for analysis**
  • Oral fluid testing to evaluate cannabis use. Dr. Shrier is conducting a study funded by NIH,
    • developing and evaluating protocols for using oral fluid self-testing to evaluate cannabis use in remote clinical trials.

Caterina Stamoulis, PhD

  • Development of brain circuits in adolescence: We aim to understand the brain’s wiring during this sensitive period of development, during white high-level cognitive processes maturate significantly, and the brain undergoes profound organization
  • Mechanistic studies on hallmark brain characteristics: We use cutting-edge computational tools to identify developing brain characteristics that play fundamental and ubiquitous role in cognition. Our studies have robustly characterized (in thousands of youth) spontaneous brain oscillations, functional and structural brain hubs, and communication and integration of information throughout the incompletely maturated adolescence brain. 
  • Impact of sleep on brain development: We investigate the fundamental impact of sleep on brain development in adolescence, and detrimental effects of insufficient, low-quality and misaligned sleep on neural circuits
  • Impact of adiposity on brain development: We investigate the role of unhealthy weight on brain development, including its neuroinflammatory effects on brain structure and function. 
  • Brain miswiring and mental health: Adolescence is a vulnerable period for mental health. We examine endogenous and exogenous risk factors and behaviors, and their adverse effects on evolving brain circuits and the cognitive processes they support. 

Gabriela Vargas, MD, MPH

  • Young Men's Health Site. Dr. Vargas is the director of the young men's health site (youngmenshealthsite.org). It helps young men and their caregivers understand health and development, including specific diseases and conditions. The website aims to empower young men around the world to take an active role in their health and health care. The young men's health site serves an international audience. There are multiple opportunities to become involved, including the development of health guides and blog posts. 
  • LARC Program. Dr. Vargas co-directs the AYAM LARC Program with Dr. Hassan. There is a QI data repository that can be used for secondary data analysis.
  • Quality Improvement. Dr. Vargas is the associate director of Quality Improvement in the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine. There is an array of opportunities for quality improvement geared towards fellows' specific area of interest. 

Zhiying (Zoey) Yue, PhD

  • Adolescent Gaming and Social Well-being: Dr. Yue examines how mental health and social challenges shape adolescents' gaming experiences, and what distinguishes healthy social play from patterns linked to risk. This work explores when gaming promotes social connection versus isolation, with the goal of informing evidence-based guidance for families and clinicians.
  • Family Media Communication and Adolescent Well-being: Dr. Yue investigates which parental strategies, including autonomy-support, parent modeling, and domain-specific communication about online norms, are most strongly linked to healthier adolescent media use and well-being. This work aims to move families and clinicians beyond blanket screen time rules toward more practical, evidence-based approaches. 
  • AI and Adolescent Health: Dr. Yue examines how adolescents and parents engage with AI-powered tools and what role conversational AI can play in supporting healthy media use and family communication around technology.
  • Young Men’s Health Research. Dr. Vargas is collaborating with Dr. Borus on a qualitative study of adolescent male’s views on healthy relationships. Dr. Vargas is also collaborating with Dr. Bickham on assessing how to improve young men’s access to health information, both online as well as in clinic (via pediatric resident education).
  • Quality Improvement. Dr. Vargas is the associate director of Quality Improvement in the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine. There is an array of opportunities for quality improvement geared towards fellows’ specific area of interest.