Before enrolling in the T.H. Chan School of Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School, Pooja Dutta was an elementary school teacher and a community health worker helping people struggling with mental illness and homelessness find housing. She chose UMass Chan’s Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) track because she is passionate about exploring social determinants of health.

“I’m grateful to have grown up in a diverse, immigrant-dense population in Queens and it’s become an important part of my identity,” said Dutta, who was born in Kolkata, India, and grew up in New York City. “These experiences informed my understanding of how structural racism impacts health outcomes and how valuable education and outreach efforts are in addressing inequitable access.”

During medical school, PURCH students split their time between Worcester and the UMass Chan-Baystate campus in Springfield.

“My favorite part about PURCH was how accessible faculty and community stakeholders are,” Dutta said. “They’re responsive to student feedback and always encouraged me to pilot my educational and outreach projects.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dutta read about and observed firsthand in her clinical experiences that social isolation worsened symptoms of mental illness and impacted healthy lifestyles. A self-proclaimed foodie, Dutta in 2021 collaborated with students, residents and community nonprofit Genesis Club to pilot a virtual nutrition outreach program called Food4Thought. Dutta and her mentor, Xiaoduo Fan, MD, MPH, professor of psychiatry, received funding from the Remillard Family Foundation in 2022 to implement the project, which provided at-home cooking kits, virtual lessons and mindful eating tactics to participants with severe mental illness. The program is still running today.

“I remember stories about Genesis Club members and staff who had lived experience with mental illness using these skills amidst auditory hallucinations, anxiety and mood symptoms, which instilled my passion for psychiatry. I’m continuously committed to provide nonpharmacologic interventions for my patients’ mental well-being.”

“I’ve learned so much through PURCH about providing equitable, trauma-informed care, effective language, and care coordination,” said Dutta, who studied biomedical science and medical anthropology at Macaulay Honors College of the City College of New York. “PURCH provided me with skills to identify problems of access within a community and to provide individualized, boots-on-the-ground solutions in the form of outreach, education and advocacy.”

Dutta chose to pursue a psychiatry residency following graduation and matched at UMass Chan in Worcester where she will begin the next phase of her training.