Elyse Park

Dr. Park is clinical health psychologist and health services researcher who focuses on understanding and improving health-related behaviors and quality of life functioning across the continuum of patients at risk for cancer through to cancer survivors. Clinically, she treats cancer survivors at the MGH Behavioral Medicine Clinic. An Associate Professor in Psychiatry at Mass General Hospital in Boston, her research is conducted at the Health Policy Research Center. She has dual leadership roles directing the behavioral science research at the MGH Cancer Center’s Survivorship Program and the MGH Tobacco Research & Treatment Center. She directs the MGH Division of Clinical Research’s Qualitative Unit and has extensive mixed methods research experience, developing interventions and surveys. She also has extensive experience developing smoking cessation counseling interventions for patients at risk for cancer, cancer patients, and cancer survivors, as well as delivering telehealth motivational interventions. She is the PI of a multisite study integrating tobacco treatment into the care of newly diagnosed patients, and she just received funding to conduct an R01 trial to implement this treatment into the care of patients at NCI-affiliated community cancer centers. She is a recipient of a National Cancer Institute K24 mentoring award, which focuses on integration and dissemination of tobacco treatment interventions into clinical care. She is MPI of an NCI-funded trial to integrate tobacco treatment into lung screening across Mass General Brigham.

Dr. Park has an extensive portfolio of research integrating motivational and mind-body interventions into clinical care settings, including an NCI-funded mulitsite R01 trial on smoking cessation integrated into cancer care. She has received external funding from the American Cancer Society, the Livestrong Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Marino Foundation to support her clinical research. At the MGH Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, Dr. Park developed an evidenced-based program, the Stress Management and Resiliency Training-Relaxation Response Resiliency Program (SMART-3RP). She is currently the lead investigator and mentor for several mind-body behavioral trials, assessing the feasibility and potential efficacy of integrating the relaxation response and the SMART-3RP into hospital based group treatments. The SMART-3RP is currently being delivered and tested with many vulnerable medical and clinician populations, and Dr. Park has received external funding to investigate the efficacy of this program with cancer center interpreters and parents of children with special learning needs.