The Faculty of Medicine of Harvard University
Curriculum Vitae
Date Prepared: | 7/2/2026 |
Name: | Jeffrey Lam |
Office Address: | 1493 Cambridge St. Cambridge, MA 02139 |
Work Phone: | 617-575-5911 |
Work Email: | jelam@cha.harvard.edu |
Education:
Sep 2012 – May 2016 | BA Magna cum Laude, Honors, Sigma Xi | Health and Human Biology: Brain and Behavior Thesis: A randomized crossover trial to test the effects of positive psychology intervention delivered by text messaging | Brown University |
Aug 2017 – May 2022 | MD | Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University |
Postdoctoral Training:
Jun 2022 – 2026 | Chief Resident of Research | Adult Psychiatry | Cambridge Health Alliance |
Sep 2026 - Present | Dupont Warren Research Fellowship |
Faculty Academic Appointments:
Jun 2022 – Present | Clinical Teaching Fellow | Harvard Medical School | ||
Professional Societies:
May 2021 - Present | American Psychiatric Association |
Oct 2020 - Present | Positive Psychiatry Interest Group |
Oct 2019 - Oct 2020 | American Public Health Association |
Honors and Prizes:
Oct 2025 | APA Fellowship |
Jun 2021 | APA/APAF Minority Medical Student Program Virtual Travel Award |
Feb 2018; May, Nov 2019; Mar, Apr 2021 | Alpert Medical School Scholarly Achievement & Leadership Award |
May 2016 | Magna Cum Laude |
May 2016 | Graduation with Honors |
May 2016 | International Health Travel Scholarship |
Report of Funded and Unfunded Projects
Current
Sept 2026 - | Dupont Warren Fellowship Mentors: Lynn Delisi, MD; Benjamin Cook Ph.D, MPH, Norah Mulvaney-Day Ph.D; Gareth Parry, Ph.D From Risk to Resilience: Psychological Resources and Suicide in Early Psychosis |
Past
June 2024-Mar 2026 | Alacrity Pilot Grant Recipient Mentors: Ana Progovac, Ph.D; Norah Mulvaney-Day Ph.D, Benjamin Cook Ph.D, MPH, Harvard Medical School Awarded $25,000 pilot grant by National Institute of Health P50MH12628 to conduct a pilot project on positive psychological well-being in individuals with major depressive disorder receiving outpatient psychiatric care at Cambridge Health Alliance, resulting in one manuscript submitted for peer review and one manuscript in preparation. |
Jan 2020 – June 2022 | Positive Psychiatry Student Researcher Jan 2020 – June 2022 Mentors: Ellen Lee, MD and Dilip Jeste, MD Conceptualized and investigated the relationship between positive psychosocial characteristics (e.g., social connection, meaning in life, wisdom, resilience) and mental health outcomes; developed research questions, conducted literature reviews, analyzed data, and contributed to multiple publications and conference presentations |
May 2020-May 2021 | Bray Humanities Fellowship Recipient Mentor: Stephen Rougas, MD, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University Awarded competitive humanities fellowship with full graduate-level salary support to conceptualize, develop, and integrate a life story narrative intervention into the medical curriculum; facilitated six life story interview training sessions and five debrief sessions across the first-year Doctoring course and third-year Internal Medicine clerkship; edited over 100 student narratives and assisted in integrating them into training sites’ electronic medical records. |
May 2018 - Sep 2018 | Summer Research Assistantship Grant Recipient Mentor: Josiah Rich, MD, MPH, Brown University Awarded $500 competitive summer research grant to conduct focus groups and surveys aimed at improving education about medication-assisted treatment for individuals with opioid use disorder; obtained IRB approval, co-facilitated focus groups at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute, analyzed data, and prepared a first-author publication |
Aug 2016 - Jun 2017 | Fulbright U.S Student Research Fellowship in Vietnam Mentor: Nguyen Vu, MD, MPH, Institute of Population Health and Development Awarded full salary support for a year to author literature reviews, intervention proposals, and grant applications for global health projects in collaboration with Hanoi University of Public Health and the Institute of Population, Health, and Development, resulting in a first-author publication |
Jun 2015 – Aug 2015 | Karen T. Romer Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award Recipient Mentor: Christopher Kahler, PhD, Brown University School of Public Health Awarded competitive $3500 summer research grant to develop and evaluate a text messaging–based Positive Psychology intervention to enhance young adults’ well-being; co-led study design, IRB submission, data collection, analysis, and resulting in first author publication. |
Jun 2014 - Sept 2014 | Ohio State Center of Population Health and Health Disparity Internship Mentor: Mary Ellen Wewers, PhD, MPH, Ohio State University Awarded salary support for summer research internship to conduct literature review and secondary data analysis on social network characteristics and depression among women in Appalachia, resulting in a first-author publication |
Report of Local Teaching and Training
Teaching of Students in Courses:
June 2025 - Present | PGY-2 Group Inpatient Supervision | Cambridge Health Alliance | Organized and co-led a weekly, case-based PGY-2 psychiatry supervision group focused on real-world psychopharmacology, diagnosis, and disposition decisions of complex clinical cases. |
July 2024 – June 2025 | Inpatient Psychiatry Didactics | Harvard Medical School | Psychosis lecture to MS2 and MS3 students |
July 2024 – June 2025 | Inpatient Psychiatry Didactics | Harvard Medical School | Mood disorders lecture to MS2 and MS3 students |
Aug 2018 – May 2019 | Doctoring Teaching Academy | Waren Alpert Medical School | Pre-clinical skills to MS1 students |
Invited Presentations:
No presentations below were sponsored by 3rd parties/outside entities
Oct 2025 | Lam, J.A., Flourishing and recovery in outpatients with major depressive disorder: Preliminary results from a sequential mixed methods pilot study ALACRITY Center Pilot Presentations. Boston, MA. Oct 14, 2025. |
Feb 2025 | Seo, V, Lam, J.A., Tang, R., Cha, L., Almeida M., Age at immigration, flourishing, & depression/anxiety among foreign-born transitional-aged students in the U.S. Mysell Day (Finalist, Oral Presentation by Seo, V.). Mysell Day, Boston, MA. Feb 26, 2025. |
June 2025 | Lam, J. A. Flourishing and recovery in outpatients with major depressive disorder: Preliminary results from an explanatory sequential mixed methods pilot study (Oral presentation by Lam, J.). Cambridge Health Alliance Psychiatry Research Meeting. June 4th, 2025. |
January 2023 | Lam, J. A. Positive Mental Health: The role of happiness, optimism, meaning in life, etc. in addiction psychiatry. Addition Psychiatry Meeting. January 19, 2023. |
Monthly presentations from June 2021 to May 2022 | Lam, J. My Life, My Story at Alpert Medical School Internal Medicine Rotation. |
April 2019, April 2020, April 2021 | Lam, J. A. The White Coat Pocket Guide:A guide to Providence community resources. Preclinical Orientation for MS2 Students. |
June 2018 | Lam, J. A., Dang, L. T., Phan, N. T., Trinh, H. T., Vu, N. C., & Nguyen, C. K. (2018, June). Sustaining mHealth interventions in Vietnam: The challenges. HTAi 2018 Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada. |
Report of Clinical Activities and Innovations
Past and Current Licensure and Board Certification:
2025 | Massachusetts Adult Psychiatry Full License |
Report of Teaching and Education Innovations
Aug 2020 – Jun 2022 | My Life, My Story | Program Lead Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University | Providence, RI
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Nov 2018 – Jun 2022 | White Coat Pocket Guide | Founder and Project Lead Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University | Providence, RI
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Sep 2018 – Dec 2018 | Medical Journalism Pre-Clinical Elective | Course Co-Leader
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Report of Scholarship
Research Investigations
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Non-peer reviewed scholarship in print or other media:
Reviews, chapters, and editorials
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Professional educational materials or reports, in print or other media:
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Abstracts, Poster Presentations, and Exhibits Presented at Professional Meetings:
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Editorial Activities:
Ad Hoc Reviewer :
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Narrative Report:
I am an academic psychiatrist and researcher at Cambridge Health Alliance and a teaching fellow at Harvard Medical School. My clinical practice is influenced by a desire to directly improve the lives of patients with severe mental illness through providing the high quality, evidence-based, and patient-centered care. I noticed my patients talking about things that were not well examined by the research literature – loneliness, a lack of meaning, stigma, discrimination, or feeling powerless in the healthcare system. These conversations and my background in positive psychology have greatly influenced my research, which aims to be practical, translational, and focuses on psychosocial protective factors and directly improving patient care.
My early work focused on health disparities underserved communities. My research career started with a health disparities internship at Ohio State University's College of Public Health, where I published my first quantitative secondary data analysis on mental health disparities and social networks in Appalachia. A subsequent course on prisoner health and human rights led me to conduct a qualitative implementation science project on improving knowledge and attitudes toward opioid use disorder treatment among incarcerated individuals, as Rhode Island became the first state to initiate treatment in carceral settings. After graduating, I served as a Fulbright Scholar in Vietnam, where I focused on stigma toward mental illness and implemented mobile health initiatives in underserved communities. In medical school, recognizing how often social needs were unmet in clinical settings, I led a team of students to build a quick-reference guide to Providence community resources, equipping over 500 medical students with information to connect patients to social services.
In my clinical work, I am greatly influenced by positive psychology and practice from a humanistic, strengths-based approach. In doing so, I noticed there was a dearth of literature the relationship between positive psychosocial resources and mental illness and the practical implementation of positive psychologic principles into clinical practice. For my undergraduate thesis, I was awarded a small grant to develop a text messaging-based positive psychology randomized controlled trial, targeting positive affect and optimism in young adults. Following this project, I began to collaborate with Dilip Jeste, MD, the previous president of the APA and researcher who coined the term “positive psychiatry” to investigate how numerous protective psychosocial resources impact on mental health outcomes and write reviews on these topics. I was awarded a Bray Humanities Fellowship to implement the “My Life My Story” project, where I facilitated a platform for patients to share their multifaceted narratives with students and providers. I conducted training for over 300 medical students, asking them to focus on the patient’s strengths and values, even amid illness. This program remains embedded in the required curriculum at Warren Alpert Medical School today, reflecting its sustained importance and value to the community.
During residency, I was the first resident to pilot Cambridge Health Alliance’s research-track residency program, served as research chief during my last year of residency, and mentored and collaborated with numerous co-residents on academic projects. I independently conceptualized and was awarded a $25,000 pilot grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a mixed-method study to better understand personal recovery and flourishing outcomes amongst patients with chronic depression. Concurrently, I spent a large proportion my clinical time during residency working in our multidisciplinary coordinated specialty care clinic for first episode psychosis under the supervision of Lynn Delisi, MD, where I started to become more interested in recovery outcomes in early psychosis.
The overarching goal of my research is to improve the overall health and well-being of individuals with severe mental illness. I have explored these questions through a variety of methodologies, including secondary data analyses, collecting primary survey data, systematic and narrative reviews, and qualitative methods. My record of funded projects, collaboration, successful track record of publication, position me well to pursue an academic career as a clinician-researcher with a focus on improving patient-centered outcomes with severe mental illness.