Eric Churchill, MD - Head of Brightwood House, Brightwood House Mentor

Dr. Eric Churchill grew up in New Jersey. He completed his undergraduate degree at McGill University in Montreal Canada, and then stayed at McGill for a Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience with a thesis on the cognitive and neuroanatomical changes that occur in Alzheimer’s disease. He attended Medical school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. During medical school he also received a Master’s in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. He completed the Residency Program in Family and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, staying an extra year to serve as chief resident.

Eric is currently an Assistant Professor in the departments of Internal Medicine and Family Medicine at the University of Massachusetts. He is active in multiple areas of medical education, clinical practice and research with a focus on community medicine in underserved urban communities. He is a learning community mentor in the UMass Chan Baystate PURCH program, in addition to medical students he teaches medical residents and physician assistant students and has won multiple teaching awards.  

He is a primary care physician and clinic team leader at the High Street Health Center in Springfield MA, in addition to weekly sessions at the Hamden County Jail providing care to clinic patients who are incarcerated. He is currently principal investigator on a research project on scurvy in the urban environment.

Eric lives in Massachusetts with his wife Elka and their two children. He is an avid gamer and provides medical fiction consulting for a number of bestselling authors.