Elena Savoia, MPH, MD, has been invited to be a speaker at the G7 Global Summit on Vaccine Confidence on June 2, 2021.

A global leader in risk communication, epidemiology and preventive medicine, Dr. Savoia has provided her technical assistance for  the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards’ (MAHB) network of LBOHs through the Harvard Chan Emergency Preparedness, Research, Evaluation and Practice (EPREP) program (The EPREP Program – Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health ) for which she serves as Deputy Director.  In collaboration with Marcia Testa, MPH, PhD, EPREP’s Co-Director and President of MAHB, along with Paul Biddinger, MD, the EPREP team has been instrumental in providing MAHB with guidance when answering questions from its LBOH members and their Health Department staff.  Most recently, Dr. Savoia participated in a Franklin Regional Council of Governments round table discussion on COVID-19 — see frog COVID-19 Roundtable .

Dr. Savoia is a Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where she has been working in public health preparedness and community safety after receiving her MPH from Harvard in 2004, originally under the mentorship of Dr. Marcia Testa, current President of MAHB. Over the past decade, Dr. Savoia and her Harvard team including most recently, Dr. Rachael Pilch-Loeb, Dr. Michael Stoto, Dr. Paul Biddinger and Mr. Nigel Harriman have worked with MAHB providing emergency preparedness training to Local Boards of Health as part of MAHB’s Certificate training program as well as co-sponsoring the training events.  During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Savoia’s expertise along with that of her team has critically informed MAHB’s epidemiology and public Health COVID-19 technical assistance program in the areas of COVID-19 infectious disease epidemiology, isolation and quarantine, contact tracing, risk communication, and vaccine confidence and hesitancy. She and her team continue to work collaboratively with the MAHB communication’s team, Johanna Hayes, ScM, Maxwell Su, ScD and Lynda Ritacco, who in turn work with other members of the public health legal technical assistance team including, Cheryl Sbarra, JD, Michael Hughes, JD and Matt Barron JD. Dr. Savoia consulted on COVID-19 early on gathering data from Italy in February, 2020, at the earliest stages of the pandemic. Currently, as part of the Harvard EPREP team she leads a study sponsored by the European CDC and the University of Bologna that attempts to document the actions taken in Europe during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic to be better prepared to manage future pandemics.

Dr. Savoia also founded and currently leads the Harvard Chan Program on Community Safety. Community Safety – Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.   As part of that program, in 2019, Dr. Savoia tapped MAHB to be part of a United States Department of Justice research project involving measuring and evaluating Online Behaviors and Safety in school-aged children and adolescents.   As part of that MAHB and Harvard Chan collaboration, her team worked together with the Brockton Public School system, conducting surveys and enabling the offering of MAHB College Scholarships to two high-school students.  In May, 2021 she engaged MAHB in two additional COVID-19 research projects investigating reasons for vaccine hesitancy and confidence.  One project is being conducted in collaboration with the American University and Google, Inc. entitled “Intervening in COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Misinformation”.  The other Harvard Chan project is sponsored by the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) on global vaccine hesitancy and disinformation issues.   Read the two pre-print publications by the Harvard EPREP team entitled  Examining the Effect of Information Channel on COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Predictors of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Socio-demographics, Co-Morbidity and Past Racial Discrimination.

Link to the G7 Summit Announcement

Watch for the MAHB Webinar on the latest finding by the Harvard EPREP team on COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance,Confidence, Hesitancy, Misinformation and Disinformation — Coming Soon as part of the MAHB Online Certificate Training Program.

Please connect with Dr. Savoia to learn more — see her linkedin.com post from Sunday May 30, 2021.