Margarita Alegría is the Director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research (CMMHR) at Cambridge Health Alliance, and a full professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  She has devoted her professional career to researching disparities in mental health and substance abuse services, with the goal of improving access, equity, and quality of these services for disadvantaged and minority populations.  She currently serves as Principal Investigator of three National Institutes of Health-funded research studies, including the continuation of the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), which aims to estimate disparities in mental health and substance abuse services for a nationally-representative sample of Asians and Latinos, as compared to non-Latino whites. The Advanced Center for Latino and Mental Health Systems Research seeks to formulate methods and conduct research that will contribute to designing interventions aimed at reducing disparities in mental health services among Latino and Black populations. The newly-funded UPR/CHA Research Center of Excellence intends to integrate and centralize a synergistic core of researchers into a single interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research enterprise by pulling together resources, leadership, and expertise from the mainland United States and the island of Puerto Rico to conduct asthma and mental health disparities research in Latino communities. She is also Principal Investigator of a study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to provide information to policy-makers and clinicians to improve the quality of depression care.  Dr. Alegría’s published works focus on the areas of services research, conceptual and methodological issues with minority populations, risk behaviors, and disparities in service delivery.  She was awarded the 2003 Mental Health Section Award of the American Public Health Association, as well as the 2006 Greenwood Award for Research Excellence, awarded by the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Program Directors Association, and the First Latino Mental Health Scientific Leadership Award, awarded in October 2007.