Emily J. Wilson, PhD, MPH, MS, CHES

Dr. Emily Wilson is a public health practitioner, educator, consultant, and researcher. She has worked at the intersection of trauma, health, and learning across school, non-profit, and community-based settings in Massachusetts and greater New England. Emily specializes in co-designing, leading, and facilitating professional learning communities/collaboratives focused on improving trauma-informed care in education, health, and human services. As an Assessment Coach at the Center for Child Wellbeing and Trauma, she supports the work of the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) Team.

Emily’s original research, “The Teaching Upstream Study: Constructing a Grounded Theory of Resilient Learning…,” examined strategies Massachusetts teachers use to mitigate trauma and proposed a model for responsive practice. Emily’s projects that center equity along with trauma-informed approaches in education and health have been recognized with honors. Her research was most recently featured in “Trauma in Adult and Higher Education: Conversations and Critical Reflections,” published by Information Age (2022). Emily earned her Ph.D. in Health Professions Education from Simmons University, where she was a Hazel Dick Leonard Interdisciplinary Research Fellow on Gender. She holds an MPH from West Chester University, an MS from Hunter College-City University of New York, a Certificate in the Treatment of Trauma from Boston University, and Certificates in Disability Studies and Non-Profit/Public Management from Rutgers University. Emily is also a certified health education specialist (CHES) and previously taught public health at Simmons and Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

In her free time, Emily volunteers as an Ambassador for the National Commission on Health Education Credentialing, where she recruits/trains the next generation of certified health education specialists to provide essential health promotion services in their communities. From 2016 through 2019, Dr. Wilson served as an appointed member of the New England Regional Health Equity Council (RHEC), part of the federal RHEC network, and on the RHEC Opioid Workgroup. She was a founding member of the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights’ Community Council within Boston Medical Center. Emily loves spending time by the water, reading/watching mysteries, baking, traveling, and hiking with her husband and their two rescue dogs.