Meet our team
Valerie L. Ward, MD, MPH
Senior Vice President, Pediatric Health Equity Strategies and Chief Health Equity Officer
Dr. Ward provides leadership, vision, and strategic oversight for Boston Children’s Office of Health Equity and Inclusion. As both a nationally and an internationally recognized leader in addressing pediatric health outcomes for all children, she leads strategic clinical initiatives and research innovations to improve pediatric healthcare delivery for children of all backgrounds.
Disclosures: Dr. Ward is the Associate Director for Health Services Research at the Children’s Hospital Association, and the Co-Leader of the Health Equity Core and Health Equity Advisor for the Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs Research Network.
Amanda Grice, MS, RDMS
Program Director
Amanda Grice, MS, RDMS, is the Program Director for the Office of Health Equity and Inclusion, at Boston Children’s Hospital. Amanda works collaboratively with departments and divisions within Boston Children’s Hospital, and with external institutions to support innovative programs and research aimed at decreasing pediatric health inequities and advancing culturally effective pediatric care. A long-standing Boston Children’s Hospital staff member, Amanda combines her many years of clinical and administrative leadership experiences, and her expertise in equity, diversity, and inclusivity to this enterprise-wide position to promote equitable healthcare delivery, access, and outcomes for all pediatric patients and their families.
Julia Ainsworth, MPH, CPH
Project Manager
Julia Ainsworth, MPH, CPH, received her undergraduate degree in Psychology from Loyola University, Maryland, and her graduate degree in Public Health from Northeastern University. In 2017, Julia joined the Department of Neurosurgery at Boston Children's Hospital as an Administrative Associate. In 2021, she began working as a Senior Patient Navigator in the Sandra L. Fenwick Institute to assist patients and caregivers with longitudinal, logistical aspects of care and with research studies.
Julia joined the Office of Health Equity and Inclusion at Boston Children's Hospital in 2022. In this role, she assists with leading the office’s career pathway programs for high school and college students. These programs are collaborations with the Office of Workforce Development, the Department of Gastroenterology, and the Center for Education Excellence and Innovation (CEEI) at Boston Children's Hospital. She collaborates with others to lead additional projects and programming sponsored by the Office of Health Equity and Inclusion.
Patrice Melvin, MPH
Senior Health Data Analyst
Patrice Melvin, MPH, Biostatistician IV and Senior Health Equity Analyst, is part of the Office of Health Equity and Inclusion and Fenwick Institute teams. She has been collaborating with researchers across the hospital for over 14 years having worked previously as a biostatistician at the Program for Patient Safety and Quality (PSQ) and, more recently, at the Center for Applied Pediatric Quality Analytics (CAPQA). She has expertise in the design, analysis, and evaluation of clinical research and quality improvement projects. She has expertise in both quantitative and qualitative analytical methods and enjoys working with large national benchmarking databases including the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS). Patrice has a special interest in research related to health equity, disparities in care, and social determinants of health.
Soana Pierrette
Senior Administrative Associate
Soana Pierrette is the Senior Administrative Associate the Sandra L. Fenwick Institute at Boston Children’s Hospital. She brings over 10 years of administrative experience with expertise in operations, scheduling and project coordination. As an experienced healthcare professional, she’s very hands-on in her leadership skills. Prior to her current role, she excelled as a unit coordinator, project coordinator and the lead senior practice coordinator at Mass General Brigham.
Lois K. Lee, MD, MPH
Associate Director for Policy, Sandra L. Fenwick Institute
Senior Associate in Pediatrics, Division of Emergency Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital
Endowed Chair in Pediatrics, Boston Children's Hospital
Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Lois Lee’s clinical and academic work focuses on pediatric emergency medicine, injury prevention, and health policy as a physician at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Lee has published seminar research on pediatric emergency medicine, injury prevention and health policy. She conducted studies examining the association of poverty on child health, improving care for patients whose preferred language is not English, and the effects of legislation on health outcomes. She has also published on workforce development for women in medicine and implicit bias and skills for caring for diverse patients.</p>
Dr. Lee has a track record of health policy and advocacy work. She was a co-lead on the teams that helped pass the Massachusetts booster seat and all-terrain vehicle (ATV) laws. She was a Nick Littlefield Health Policy Fellow at the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation (NEHI) in 2017. During this time she served on the health policy staff for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). She was the inaugural director of the Academic Pediatric Association’s (APA) Health Policy Scholars Program. Her passion for improving child health drives her clinical care in the emergency department, research, teaching of trainees and faculty, and health policy advocacy work.
Sabra Katz-Wise, PhD
Staff Scientist
Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Sabra L. Katz-Wise, PhD (she/her) is an Associate Professor in Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and in Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also Adjunct Faculty at The Fenway Institute. She is Director of the SOGIE (Sexual Orientation Gender Identity and Expression) Health Equity Research Collaborative and the GenderWise Lab, and she is a Senior Faculty Advisor for the Boston Children’s Office of Health Equity and Inclusion. Dr. Katz-Wise’s research uses community-engaged mixed methods to investigate sexual orientation and gender identity development and fluidity, health inequities related to sexual orientation and gender identity in adolescents and young adults, and psychosocial functioning in families with transgender and nonbinary youth. Her work has been funded by several federal and foundation grants, and is widely published in peer-reviewed journals. In addition to research, Dr. Katz-Wise is involved in advocacy efforts to improve the workplace climate, patient care, and learning environment for LGBTQ+ individuals, including her role on the Queer Leadership Council for the Boston Children’s Rainbow Alliance and member of the Boston Children’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Council.
Snehal Shah, MD, MPH
Associate Medical Director, Department of Accountable Care and Clinical Integration; Senior Faculty Advisor, Office of Health Equity and Inclusion
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Snehal N. Shah, MD, MPH is a primary care pediatrician and an epidemiologist. She is Associate Medical Director in the Department of Accountable Care and Clinical Integration (DACCI) at Boston Children’s Hospital, Senior Faculty Advisor in BCH’s Office of Health Equity and Inclusion (OHEI) and Research Scholar in the Sandra L. Fenwick Institute for Pediatric Health Equity and Inclusion. She is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and provides clinical care for patients at the Boston Children’s Hospital Primary Care Center. Dr. Shah is currently leading the design and implementation of Boston Children’s Health Accountable Care Organization’s health equity strategy. In addition, her work focuses on identifying social needs among families in the primary care setting and addressing these needs through the integration of medical and social care and community-clinical partnerships. In her various roles, she aims to promote health equity through action on social determinants of health by working at the family, community, and policy-levels. She has expertise in health care system approaches to health equity, development of systems to identify and address health-related social needs, and measurement of health inequities.