Kenneth H. Mayer Fellowship
Named after Fenway Health’s Medical Research Director, Co-Founder and current Co-Chair of The Fenway Institute, the Kenneth H. Mayer Fellowship provides early stage investigators support for developing an independent research agenda and valuable insight into how to apply for grant funding.
“Advances in the field of HIV and LGBTQIA+ healthcare require bold and imaginative thinking, persistence in the face of challenging scientific questions, and prioritization of community-focused collaborations in service of better health and care for those in need,” said Fenway Health CEO Ellen LaPointe. “Those are the qualities Dr. Mayer has utilized throughout his career to make significant contributions to the field of HIV research, prevention, and treatment. We are thrilled to offer this Fellowship to emerging leaders in the field.”
Fellows will receive mentorship from Dr. Mayer, other senior faculty at The Fenway Institute, and national experts through monthly cohort meetings and one-to-one advisement. They will receive professional development and training in how to navigate the demands and politics of academic life, ensure that their research reflects the real world racial, gender, and cultural diversity of affected communities, and transcend gender stereotypic practices in academia. Each Fellow will receive $50,000 to conduct a pilot research project at Fenway Health.
The Fellowship is supported by funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the B Street Foundation, and amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. Read our press release here.
The first cohort of Fellows, selected through a rigorous and competitive process, are:
Abigail Batchelder
Abigail (Abby) Batchelder, PhD, MPH is a clinical psychologist researcher with a background in public health. She is an Affiliated Investigator at the Fenway Institute, a staff psychologist and the Assistant Director of the Behavioral Medicine Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and the Director of the Substance Use Scientific Working Group at the Harvard Center for AIDS Research.
Project: Hazardous drinking disproportionately impacts women and gender diverse individuals who identify as sexual minorities (SMW+); however, surprisingly little published literature has investigated barriers and facilitators to hazardous drinking treatment among SMW+ or pursued adaptation of evidence-based hazardous drinking interventions for this population This project will systematically refine existing evidence-based alcohol reduction intervention and delivery methods for SMW+, with a focus on SMW+ of color, and then conduct a small proof-of-concept pilot study to assess feasibility and acceptability.
Richard Bido Medina and Alex Keuroghlian
Dr. Richard O. Bido Medina is currently Administrative Chief Resident and Public & Community Psychiatry Chief Resident at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/McLean Psychiatry Residency Training Program. He is also part of the Physician-Scientist Training Program. Dr. Keuroghlian is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS), Michele and Howard J Kessler Chair and Director of the Division of Public and Community Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Associate Chief of the MGH Department of Psychiatry, and Director of the Division of Education and Training at The Fenway Institute.
Project: To date, there is no formal curricular program in Dominican medical schools addressing the special mental health needs of LGBTQIA+ populations. This project aims to identify needs and gaps in LGBTQIA+ mental health training in Dominican medical students to pilot and assess a curricular intervention.
Peter Chai
Dr. Peter R Chai is an associate professor of emergency medicine and medical toxicology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, and affiliate research scholar at the Koch Institute for Integrated Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and The Fenway Institute. He is also research faculty at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
Project: Food insecurity directly affects many co-occurring mental health conditions and engagement in HIV care. The Fenway Learning from Individuals with Food insecurity Engaging in HIV care (LIFE) study will leverage smartphone-based digital phenotyping to measure real-time syndemic stressors surrounding food insecurity and HIV antiretroviral adherence.
Calvin Fitch
Calvin Fitch, PhD is an Affiliated Investigator at The Fenway Institute. He is also a Staff Psychologist in Behavioral Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed his PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Miami.
Project: Maximizing PrEP uptake among Young Black MSM: A Mixed-Methods Assessment of Facilitators and Barriers and a Pilot RCT of a Culturally-Tailored Peer Navigation/Coping Skills Program. This project seeks to obtain mixed-methods data from young black men who have sex with men (YBMSM) regarding facilitators and barriers to uptake and adherence to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV, which will then be used to inform a culturally-tailored peer navigation/coping skills intervention.
Amelia Stanton
Amelia M. Stanton PhD is an Assistant Professor at Boston University in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and a licensed clinical psychologist. She completed a NIMH-funded T23 postdoctoral fellowship in Global Psychiatry at MGH and Harvard Medical School in 2022, and she received her doctorate in clinical psychology from The University of Texas at Austin in 2019.
Project: Amelia has proposed to adapt eSense, a sexual function intervention originally developed for cisgender women with sexual arousal and desire concerns, for transwomen at any stage of the gender affirmation process. eSense is an online, self-guided program with a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) arm and a mindfulness-based therapy (MBT) arm.