Behavioral Health Equity Program
The Behavioral Health Equity Program works to increase access to community tailored evidence-informed psycho-behavioral interventions for individuals and systems who have been historically underserved by behavioral healthcare (e.g., people who use drugs, people with and vulnerable to HIV, and sexual and gender minority people). Building on our past and current projects, we work with communities with unmet needs to collaboratively identify behavioral health services and models of care. We then select and adapt evidence-based interventions and delivery strategies, and then implement and assess their impact to ultimately increase sustained access to evidence-informed services.
We invite you to peruse our website (https://sites.bu.edu/bhequity/) to learn more about our current projects and skilled and compassionate research staff. Please contact us with any questions (bhequity@bu.edu).
Director of the Program:
Abigail (Abby) Batchelder, PhD, MPH
Abigail (Abby) Batchelder (she/her), PhD, MPH is a clinical psychologist with a background in public health. Dr. Batchelder’s research has been funded by the NIH, SAMHSA, Harvard, UCSF, private foundations, and industry; she has been awarded 15 unique grants as principal investigator. Dr. Batchelder’s research aims to collaboratively identify, adapt, and implement evidence-based interventions with and for underserved people with unmet psycho-behavioral health needs, including people with and vulnerable to HIV, people who use drugs, and sexual and gender minority people with a goal of increasing behavioral health equity.
Active Projects:
- Project MATTER (NIDA R01DA057298; PI Batchelder)
- iSTRIVE Pilot RCT (NIDA R34DA053686; PI Batchelder)
- Capacity Building Status Neutral Mental Health Intervention (Ending the HIV Epidemic grant from Harvard Center for AIDS Research (CFAR/NIA)); PI Batchelder)
- BRAVVO (Gilead Health; MPIs Mayer & Batchelder)
- Project 4U (Fenway Pilot Award PI Batchelder)
- Bridge to Belonging (B2B; PI Batchelder)