Senior scientific collaborator -  International Clinical and Health Services Research (ICHSR)

Dr. Irene Falgas-Bague is a clinical psychiatrist with a specialization in cultural and social psychiatry, coupled with a career as a public mental health researcher. She earned her M.D. from the University of Barcelona, honed her expertise in cultural and social psychiatry at McGill University, and obtained her Ph.D. from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with dual recognition by Harvard Medical School. Her clinical experience spans working at the migrant and refugee mental health clinic at Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, as well as at the Psychiatry Unit of the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Trinidad and Tobago. She completed post-doctoral work at the Disparities Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and, in 2019 she was appointed instructor at the department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School for her teaching work on cultural competence for medical residents and her systematic training approach for training lay-workers on providing mental health services. As a senior scientific researcher at the Disparities Research Unit at Mongan Research Institute (Massachusetts General Hospital) in Boston, Dr. Falgas-Bague focused her research on examining access to mental health services for underserved populations in the U.S. and Spain. She focused in developing and testing culturally adapted, evidence-based interventions for depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders through large clinical trials. Since 2021, Dr. Falgas-Bague has served as a senior scientific collaborator at the Swiss TPH, where she leads three research projects, developing and testing a new intervention for women's well-being in Zambia, addressing youth suicide in Zambia, and conducting health systems analysis in Kosovo. Simultaneously, she collaborates with Dr. Belus's team at the Clinical Epidemiology Department at Basel University Hospital, actively contributing to youth mental health projects in Malawi, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho.

Project: Peer Education for Gender Inclusion and Substance Use in Southern Africa (PEGISUS)

Links: Publications    ORCID    LinkedIn    CV