The Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine (BHI) is pleased to announce Elyse R. Park, PhD, MPH as Director of Research. Dr. Park is a Professor of Psychiatry and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and has been on staff at Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School since 2001 and has led BHI’s behavioral research program for more than a decade.  A lead author of the Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) program, Dr. Park is a gifted clinician and researcher with interest in resiliency, cancer prevention and survivorship, and tobacco treatment research.

“I am very excited about the new phase we are entering with our mind body medicine research,” said BHI Director Gregory L. Fricchione, MD. “Dr. Park is a visionary leader and one of MGH’s most successful researchers. She not only took the lead in manualizing the SMART program but has adapted it for use as a burnout prevention tool, as a support for cancer survivors and other medically vulnerable populations, clinicians, interpreters, and healthcare workers, and as a curriculum for children, siblings and parents of children with autism and special needs, among many other projects. She explores innovative delivery mechanisms, including hybrid and digital modalities.”

Dr. Park is also the founding director of MGH’s Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research Center (HPRIR), serves as Director of the Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Unit of the MGH Division of Clinical Research and as Director of the MGH Cancer Center’s Smokefree Support Service.

“It is a great honor to lead the Institute’s research mission. We have an incredibly talented transdisciplinary team of researchers and clinicians who are conducting innovative, critical work to improve the wellbeing of our most vulnerable patients, dedicated clinicians and caregivers, and diverse communities,” Dr. Park said. “Our passion for this clinical research is fueled by Dr. Benson’s clairvoyant vision and the increasing growing needs for accessible mind-body and resiliency treatment.”

In addition to Dr. Park, noted neuroimaging and meditation researcher Sara Lazar, PhD, a longtime BHI collaborator; and mindfulness expert and researcher Christina Luberto, PhD; will join the institute as it looks to build and expand our tradition of clinical and mechanistic research.

“Under Dr. Park’s leadership, we enjoy a strong collaboration with the group of talented young health psychologists she mentors. We are now growing our research team with the addition of Dr. Sara Lazar, who is well-known to us from her pioneering neuroimaging work as one of the world’s premier meditation researchers. Dr. Benson and I enjoyed working with Sara as she began her pioneering neuroimaging career. And it is exciting to support her more recent interests in stress, aging, and meditation and in the planning of new studies on human flourishing. We are also very happy to have Dr. Tina Luberto, an expert in mindfulness and self-compassion, who is well known to us from many previous collaborations, join our team and devoting time to our clinical research efforts in stress and aging research, healthcare utilization and mindfulness and meditation studies,” Dr. Fricchione said.

Current Research Projects addressing:

• Depression and anxiety after a cardiovascular event
• Stress coping and resiliency among teenagers of siblings with autism
• Memory and attention for successful aging
• Healthcare utilization among cancer survivors and their caregivers

 

Mind-Body Resiliency Data Repository

Additionally, the team oversees an ongoing data repository tracking outcomes of clinical patients and research participants to understand the reach and enhance the effects of our programs and their implementation.

https://bensonhenryinstitute.org/research-data-repository/

 

Elyse R. Park, PhD, MPH has extensive experience designating and evaluating behavioral intervention and implementation trials. She founded the Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research Program (HPRIR) in the MGH Departments of Psychiatry & Medicine. Her clinical research focuses on resiliency, health promotion for cancer patients and survivors, cancer risk perceptions, and quality of life for cancer survivors, with a lens of accessible and equitable care for all. She directs the MGH Division of Clinical Research’s Qualitative and Mixed Methods Unit and uses qualitative research to inform intervention development, intervention adaptation, and measurement design. Her research has been supported by funding from the National Cancer Institute, National Center Complementary and Integrative Research Health, the American Cancer Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. She has published over 350 peer reviewed original articles

Dr. Park is Director of Research at the Benson-Henry Institute and created the manualized version of the SMART- 3RP which is currently being tested with a variety of individuals with medical illnesses (women undergoing breast biopsy, women with infertility, individuals with cancer), clinicians (palliative care clinicians, cancer care interpreters, frontline clinicians) and healthcare workers, and caregivers (parents of children with special needs, caregivers of cancer survivors). She is also lead investigator and mentor for many mind-body behavioral trials, assessing the feasibility and potential efficacy of integrating the relaxation response into hospital and community-based group and individual treatments delivered in-person and via telehealth and other forms of digital delivery.

Sara W. Lazar, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The focus of her research is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of yoga and meditation, both in clinical settings and in healthy individuals. She has also collaborated with clinicians to study the effects on mindfulness on anxiety and depression. Her current work is focused on well-being and personality development. Dr. Lazar has been practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation since 1994 and her research has been covered by numerous news outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and WebMD.

Christina Luberto, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Her interests center on mindfulness- and compassion-based interventions for emotional and behavioral health promotion in people with heart disease. Dr. Luberto is a staff psychologist and clinical researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital where she works as Associate Director for Mindfulness Research and Programs in the Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research Center, and Associate Director for Compassion-based Research at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine. She is founding Director of the MGH Women’s Heart Health Mindful Living Center, a clinical and research center focused on evidence-based mindfulness and mind-body interventions for patients with heart disease.

 

The Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine

Named for Founder Herbert Benson, MD, a cardiologist and pioneer of mind body medicine, and American businessman and Boston-based philanthropist John W. Henry, the Benson-Henry Institute was established at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2006 to provide coordinated mind body care practices to patients and clinicians, conduct research into the value of integrative medicine, and promote the use of mind body medicine in healthcare systems. BHI has conducted some of the most cutting-edge research demonstrating the healing effects of stress management and reduction.  Today, the institute provides direct care to patients and trains hundreds of clinicians around the world in the delivery of its copyrighted Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) and Positivity and Relaxation Training (PART) programs in clinics, community settings and universities around the world.