Kristen Dickins, PhD

“I’m a big believer in the notion of primary care and that through the implementation of effective and acceptable primary care strategies that we do stand a better chance of addressing some very, very preventable adverse health outcome at a very primary level.”

Kristen Dickins is a postdoctoral researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, focusing specifically on how policy-based changes affect the ways in which people are able to access or choose to use primary care, the emergency department, and urgent care.

Dickins started her career as a social worker in an HIV clinic in Chicago, where she studied access to health care among populations historically underrepresented in medical research. Dickins wanted to provide more comprehensive care, so she went back to school to become a nurse practitioner. Ultimately, she wanted to couple her experience as a social worker and her training as a nurse practitioner to better serve those in need.