The Institute for Health Equity Research, Evaluation & Policy

June 2025

Celebrating Health, Wellness, and Health Centers with the

IHE Mission Committee

This summer we are celebrating health, wellness, health centers, and honoring the members of the IHE Mission Committee.

In our July Mission Committee Open House, we will honor the four Mission Committee members as this year's Community Heroes. During the Open House, the committee members will share insights and wisdom about health, wellness, and the significance of community health centers as well as what brought them to be on the IHE Mission Committee.

Please see below for information about each of our Mission Committee members. Stay tuned for more information about watching the broadcast of the Open House by checking the IHE webpage.

IHE Mission Committee Members

Joyce Rain Anderson, PhD 

Professor, Bridgewater State University

Board Member, Brockton Neighborhood Health Center

Joyce Rain Anderson is a Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the English Department at Bridgewater State University where she teaches first-year composition for multilingual students as well as courses in cultural and Indigenous rhetoric at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She is the Coordinator of Native American and Indigenous Studies. Among other roles, she served as the first faculty associate for the Office of Institutional Diversity from 2009-2014 and is currently on the Racial Justice and Equity Council. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire in 2005.  



Joyce Rain was an early patient at the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center and, in 1997, joined the board. She served as Board President for seven years. Presently, she chairs the Patient Care Committee and serves on the board’s Health Equity Committee. 

Learn more:

https://www.bridgew.edu/department/english/dr-joyce-rain-anderson

https://www.joycerain.com/

Jeffrey Thomas

Founder & Executive Director, Mandela Yoga Project

Jeffrey Thomas, Founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit Mandela Yoga Project, Inc. (MYP), is passionate about recognizing people of color for their capacity to effect positive change and transcend their circumstances. He is responsible for strategy, partnerships, fund development, and day-to-day operations. He first practiced lyengar yoga and, after yoga teacher training, continued with Trauma-Informed Mind-Body (TIMBo) and Prison Yoga Project training. Over his career, he has partnered with advocates from low-income communities to deliver more than $550M in public and private funds to low-income communities. 

In his roles at MYP, he draws on his experience in the design of ambitious multi-stakeholder collaborations designed to resource low-income communities of color. He has been nationally recognized for his business plan for a nonprofit social enterprise called Ploughshares Nursery which has been in operation since 2005 offering employment training to individuals emerging from conditions of homelessness. He worked with formerly incarcerated activists and a poverty law clinic at Berkeley Law School to co-create Clean State – a program that has assisted more than 18,000 people seeking to remedy their criminal records. In 2011, Jeffrey co-designed a participatory action research project at UMass Boston’s Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy – a graduate school of public policy – in which women of color reported on barriers to civic leadership and policymaking for residents of low-income communities. Their research resulted in the creation of a training program for women of color who seek to become elected or appointed policymakers. 

Learn more: https://www.mandelayogaproject.org/our-team

Nieisha Deed 

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, PureSpark

Nieisha Deed is a powerful emerging voice and leader in the mental health and wellness space in Boston and is working fiercely to advocate for mental wellness in Boston’s Black community. She is the visionary and creator behind PureSpark. As a person living with bipolar disorder, Nieisha understands all too well how important access to holistic support services and community are to one’s mental wellness.

As a Black woman, Nieisha is a community builder and disruptor in the mental health and wellness space. She is dismantling the walls of silence by raising awareness about mental illness and wellness, not just through PureSpark, but with speaking engagements and facilitated events, where she shares her personal story as a Black woman living with a mental Illness. Because the Black community has historically been left out of the conversations about mental health and wellness, Nieisha feels that it’s vital to share her personal experience and voice with her community. Through her leadership, Nieisha shatters the shame around mental illnesses, creates access to mental health support, and shows us that healing is possible.

Learn more: https://yourpurespark.com/

Sonia Erlich, LMHC, MFA, MA 

Deputy Director for Workforce Development and Training, TEAM UP Scaling and Sustainability Center

Sonia Erlich, LMHC, MFA, MA, is the Deputy Director for Workforce Development and Training for TEAM UP Scaling and Sustainability Center. Born and raised in Boston, Sonia has worked toward improving the health and wellness of this city and its communities for more than twenty years. She provides psychotherapy for individuals and collectives of various ages, identities, cultures, and life circumstances. As a clinician and wellness instructor, she is passionate about creating meaningful, accessible interventions. Grounded in her human service experience, she works with organizations to build environments that support and sustain their employees and make it possible to deliver compassionate, culturally responsive care. 

Prior to her clinical work, her field experience included wilderness therapy in Utah, case management in Boston, teaching in after-school programs, and group leadership in community centers and residential treatment facilities. 

Sonia is a storyteller and uses both writing and film to raise awareness about community health, the workforce, and social justice issues. Sonia earned her MA in Mental Health Counseling and Behavioral Medicine and her MFA in Creative Writing.

Learn more: https://www.teamupcenter.org/

Juneteenth 2025

This June we join the Massachusetts Medical Society in recognizing the voices of Black physicians who are improving lives across the Commonwealth. 

We also celebrate the work of Community Health Centers that serve more than 1 million patients regardless of their ability to pay. 

June marks LGBTQIA+ Pride Month

IHE celebrates up the work of Fenway Health in honor of Pride Month:

June marks LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in the United States and many other countries around the world, with the June 28, 1969 Stonewall Uprising viewed by many as the cornerstone moment of the modern LGBTQIA+ rights movement and the birth of Pride.

Pride is more than a celebration—it’s a living legacy of decades of activism, community, and progress. Massachusetts has long been at the forefront of LGBTQIA+ rights and since our founding in 1971, Fenway Health alongside our many allies and community partners has helped to lead the way.

Learn more about how Fenway Health supports LGBTQIA+ health and how they encourage communities to celebrate Pride this June: fenwayhealth.org/lgbtqiapride-2025

In 2023, The Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (Mass League) created the Institute for Health Equity Research, Evaluation, and Policy, Inc. (IHE), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization designed to support Health Center-led Science driven by community health centers.  

IHE convenes communities and supports the scientific infrastructure, implementation, program evaluation and training needed to identify and sustain the most effective strategies for attaining equity in health and healthcare, as defined by those with lived experience of health inequities.

Learn more about IHE on our webpage of the Mass League website and on our LinkedIn page.

The Institute for Health Equity Research, Evaluation, and Policy, Inc. is a subsidiary of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers