Harvard Health Experts and Contributors

Aswita Tan-McGrory, MBA, MSPH

Contributor

Aswita Tan-McGrory MBA, MSPH is director of the Disparities Solutions Center (DSC) and administrative director of the Mongan Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She also is an adjunct faculty member at Northeastern University. Ms. Tan-McGrory’s interests are in providing equitable care to BIPOC and immigrant populations. She speaks nationally and internationally to organizations about how race, ethnicity, and language impact the quality of care.

Rudolph Tanzi, PhD

Contributor

Rudolph Tanzi is the director of the genetics and aging research unit and director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. He serves as the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He discovered numerous Alzheimer’s genes, including the first three, and directs the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Alzheimer’s Genome Project. Tanzi has won the highest awards in his field, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and is one of the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in the world. He has co-authored nearly 800 research publications with over 185,000 citations, and is a New York Times bestselling author of several books.

Christy N. Taylor, MD, MPH

Contributor

Dr. Christy Taylor is an internal medicine resident at Massachusetts General Hospital. She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies, in biology and public health respectively, at the University of Miami. She subsequently completed her medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Marygrace Taylor

Health Writer

Marygrace Taylor is an award-winning health and wellness writer with more than 15 years of experience creating print and digital content for major national publications. She's based in Philadelphia, PA.

Monique Tello, MD, MPH

Contributor

Dr. Monique Tello is a practicing physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, director of research and academic affairs for the MGH DGM Healthy Lifestyle Program, clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School, and author of the evidence-based lifestyle change guide Healthy Habits for Your Heart. She completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency training program at Yale/New Haven Hospital. After residency, she earned a master’s in public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and fellowship in general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is half Latina, speaks Spanish, and maintains a close relationship with her extended family in Guatemala. She is married to local sports broadcaster Bob Socci, and they have two young children, one with autism. She writes a popular blog, www.DrMoniqueTello.com, about achieving balance, health, and wellness from the perspective of doctor and mother.

Robyn Thom, MD

Contributor

Dr. Robyn Thom is a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital. She will begin practicing at the Lurie Center for Autism as a staff psychiatrist when she completes her fellowship training in July 2020. She is a graduate of Harvard College, the University of Toronto Medical School, and the Harvard Longwood Psychiatry Residency Training Program. Her clinical and research interests include autism spectrum disorder and other neurodevelopmental disorders, the interface between medical and psychiatric co-morbidity, and psychopharmacology.

Rebecca P. Thomas, PhD

Contributor

Rebecca P. Thomas is a clinical psychology fellow in the division of developmental medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a research fellow in the laboratories of cognitive neuroscience at Boston Children's Hospital. She completed her PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Connecticut. Her clinical work focuses on complex neurodevelopmental assessments in pediatric populations. Her research addresses gaps in understanding in the trajectory of social communication profiles in young children with a range of neurodevelopmental disorders, and developing tools to categorize progress in language and communication development.

Deirdre Tobias, ScD

Contributor

Deirdre Tobias is an obesity and nutritional epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She received her doctorate and postdoctorate training at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she is also an associate professor of nutrition. Dr. Tobias was appointed the Academic Editor for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2019. Her research focuses on the role of diet and lifestyle for obesity and its major chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, and she has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. She served on the scientific committee for the 2025–2030 US Dietary Guidelines for Americans. She contributes to the development and analyses of healthful dietary patterns, metabolomics, and nutrition epidemiologic methods.

Pritesh Topiwala, MD

Contributor

Dr. Pritesh Topiwala is an Interventional Pain Management physician and Anesthesiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is the Medical Director of the Brigham and Women’s Foxboro Pain Management clinic. His clinical interests are neuromodulation and interventional oncologic pain therapies. Dr. Topiwala finished his Anesthesiology residency and Pain Medicine fellowship training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

David R. Topor, PhD, MS-HPEd

Contributor

Dr. David Topor is a clinical psychologist, and the associate director for healthcare professional education at the VA Boston Healthcare System. He is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Elena Toschi, MD

Contributor

Elena Toschi, MD, is an Italian physician who has worked in Italy with Ele Ferrannini on insulin action and glucose metabolism in the late 1990’s. She then moved to Boston, USA to join Susan Bonner-Weir’s lab as a post-doctoral fellow working on the biology of islets of Langerhans and their regeneration. After obtaining her American medical license and specialization in Endocrinology at the joined Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/ Joslin program she has joined the Joslin adult clinic to work with Dr Howard Wolpert. Her clinical work has focused on use of technology in T1D to improve outcome. She has been involved in several multicenter trial on use of technology for the management of diabetes: REPLACE-BG and DIAMOND study among others. These studies have evaluated the benefit of CGM use by patients on multiple daily injections of insulin, have changed healthcare policy, with CGM now recommended to all patients with Type 1 Diabetes and CGM are now covered by Medicare. She is currently working on the use of technology to improve diabetes management and reduce the risk of hypoglycemia in the eldery with T1D (NIDDK DP3-Tango Study) in collaboration with Dr Munshi, and on restoration of hypoglycemia awareness in people with T1D and problematic hypoglycemia in collaboration with Dr Amiel. (JDRF – HARP.doc). She has been recently appointed Director of the Young Adult Clinic in the Adult Diabetes Section at Joslin Diabetes Center.

Joy Tsai, MD

Contributor

Dr. Joy Tsai is an endocrinologist in the endocrinology division at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She earned her medical degree from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, completed her residency at Northwestern McGaw Medical Center, and pursued a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Her clinical research at MGH focuses on optimizing postmenopausal osteoporosis therapy, with an emphasis on evaluation of bone quality via advanced imaging techniques. She is the associate director of the MGH Bone Density Center and the medical clinical director for MGH Endocrine and Osteoporosis Associates clinic.

Sara Moradi Tuchayi, MD, MPH

Contributor

Dr. Sara Moradi Tuchayi is a dermatology research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at MGH is focused on the development of novel therapies for skin disorders.

J. Kevin Tucker, MD

Contributor

Dr. John Kevin Tucker is chief of renal medicine at Brigham and Women's/Faulkner Hospital, former director of the BWH/MGH joint nephrology fellowship program, and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tucker has received recognition as an outstanding teacher during his tenure at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Renal Division. He earned an MD from Cornell University and a bachelor’s degree from Birmingham-Southern College.

Karen Turner, OTR/L

Contributor

Karen Turner is an advanced practice occupational therapy patient navigator for individuals with autism and intellectual/developmental disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital. In this unique role, she provides care planning and coordination services, as well as individualized OT-based interventions for the patient, their caregiver(s), and their healthcare team. As a result, she reduces barriers to care, optimizes patient safety, improves satisfaction, and increases provider knowledge and comfort in the delivery of health services. Outside of patient encounters, Ms. Turner educates practitioners on caring for individuals with ASD/IDD, and works with departments across the continuum of care to implement systems to make individualized accommodations standard procedure. Ms. Turner received a BS from Boston University’s College of Communication in communication studies, and an MS from Boston University’s Sargent College in occupational therapy.

Claire Twark, MD

Contributor

Dr. Twark is an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a board member of the International Society for Sports Psychiatry, and a psychiatrist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where she directs the Athlete Mind Program. Her interests include addiction psychiatry and sports psychiatry. Dr. Twark ran track and field and cross country for Harvard College, and is now a member of the Boston Triathlon Team. She qualified for and completed the 2014 Ironman World Championship in Hawaii. Based on Ironman results in 2014, she was ranked 18th in the U.S. and 38th in the world (top 1%) in her age group. She is a four-time Ironman triathlon finisher and was awarded All-American Honors from USA Triathlon in 2015. Her own experience as an athlete has inspired her to promote exercise as a component of psychiatric treatment and help other athletes.

Harvard Health Experts and Contributors

List of Experts

Aswita Tan-McGrory, MBA, MSPH

Rudolph Tanzi, PhD

Christy N. Taylor, MD, MPH

Marygrace Taylor

Monique Tello, MD, MPH

Robyn Thom, MD

Rebecca P. Thomas, PhD

Deirdre Tobias, ScD

Pritesh Topiwala, MD

David R. Topor, PhD, MS-HPEd

Elena Toschi, MD

Joy Tsai, MD

Sara Moradi Tuchayi, MD, MPH

J. Kevin Tucker, MD

Karen Turner, OTR/L

Claire Twark, MD