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The Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research (HPRIR) Program is a joint initiative between the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Mongan Institute and the MGH Department of Psychiatry to harness the strengths of interdisciplinary behavioral science delivery research.

What is HPRIR?

Program Mission

To develop, assess, implement, and disseminate evidence-based interventions focused on resiliency, health-promotion, illness prevention and survivorship, through research, training, and advocacy.

Program Aims

  • Develop and assess interventions that are accessible, sustainable, and integrated into healthcare systems.
  • Provide training on behavioral and resiliency interventions that meets the needs of all individuals.
  • Advocate for health equity and integration of behavioral health treatments. 
  • Promote the translation of clinical research findings through implementation and dissemination.

Program Objectives

Develop and assess interventions to:

  • Promote illness prevention, early detection, and healthy lifestyles (e.g., tobacco and addiction treatment, physical activity, recuperative sleep).
  • Manage chronic illness from treatment initiation to ongoing care, including survivorship.  
  • Enhance healthcare access and utilization across the illness spectrum.
  • Adapt mind-body resiliency interventions for patients, providers, and communities.
  • Leverage technology-based innovations to deliver interventions that enhance individuals’ emotional and physical well-being.

Provide training to:

  • Educate students, investigators, and clinicians in resiliency and behavioral intervention research, including multi-phase projects and use of mixed methods.
  • Cultivate expertise in health equities research.
  • Teach clinical investigators how to conduct behavioral delivery science research.
  • Engage trainees from underrepresented communities and from across career stages in mentored internships with HPRIR-affiliated faculty members.

Advocate for health equity and integration of mental and behavioral health treatments to:

  • Facilitate systems-based integration of evidence-based behavioral and resiliency treatments.
  • Develop relationships with community partners to strengthen intervention reach, relevance, and impact.
  • Participate in community health events locally, nationally, and internationally.
  • Engage in service through leadership roles in professional and advocacy organizations that focus on health equity and justice.

Promote the translation of clinical research findings to:

  • Prioritizing local community and national outreach to design sustainable interventions.
  • Partnering with local organizations and communities, healthcare networks, and national consortiums to facilitate translation of research findings into sustainable programs.
  • Disseminate to the public (e.g., Twitter, interviews, social media) late-breaking and innovative scholarship in behavioral and resiliency research.

Program Intervention Expertise

  • Mind-body medicine interventions and treatments
  • Stress management and resiliency interventions and treatments
  • Cognitive-behavioral interventions
  • Stage-based and risk-based motivational treatments for health behaviors
  • Psychoeducational interventions and treatments
  • Positive psychology interventions and treatments
  • Problem-solving and emotion-focused coping skills-based interventions and treatments
  • Biobehavioral measurement
  • Phased intervention development

Meet our Director, Dr. Elyse Park

Dr. Park is director of Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research Program (HPRIR). She is a clinical health psychologist and health services researcher who, for the past 20 years at MGH, has been dedicated to understanding and improving health-related behaviors among cancer survivors and populations at risk for cancer and chronic disease. Her research focuses on developing and implementing behavioral interventions to enhance resiliency, decrease tobacco use, and improve access to healthcare.  A Professor of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, her research is conducted at the MGH Mongan Institute’s Health Policy Research Center and Department of Psychiatry. Clinically, she treats cancer survivors. She founded the MGH Division of Clinical Research’s Qualitative Mixed Methods Research Unit and directs behavioral research at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine and the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center and, in this capacity, and has developed evidence-based interventions.  Accordingly, she started two hospital-based clinical services: the MGH Cancer Center’s Smokefree Support Service and the MGH Cancer Center Resiliency Survivorship Group Program.

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