Dr. Battaglia is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health where she is Interim Chief of the Section of General Internal Medicine. She also serves as the Director of the Women’s Health Unit, a national Center of Excellence in Women’s Health where she has achieved national recognition for improving the health of vulnerable women at risk for delays in care. As a practicing internist and breast health specialist at Boston Medical Center, the largest safety net medical center in New England, her approach to health disparities focuses largely on engaging the community as partners in the research process.

She has 17 years of experience designing, implementing and evaluating community-engaged Patient Navigation programs to reduce delays across the continuum of cancer care, including co-leading the Boston site of the NCI’s national Patient Navigation Research Program in which we recruited over 3,000 participants from Boston’s low-income populations accounting for nearly 30% of the data to the national database. The American Cancer Society and the Patient Center Outcomes Research Institute support her research to study innovations in the delivery of patient navigation for low income cancer patients.

As Director of the Community Engagement Program for the Boston University Clinical and Translational Science Award, she is leading a cooperative study funded by the National Center to Advance Translational Science (NCATS) in partnership with the four Massachusetts Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA)hubs (Boston University, Harvard University, Tufts University and University of Massachusetts) to support a City-wide dissemination study to reduce breast cancer disparities through a patient navigation network. Dr. Battaglia is also long-time volunteer leader for the American Cancer Society, where she recently served as Chair for the New England Division Board of Directors.