Dr. Alister Martin, MD, MPP is faculty at the MGH Center for Social Justice and Health Equity  at Harvard  Medical School and Founder of Get Waivered, a campaign aimed at transforming EDs nationwide into the front door for recovery for patients with opioid addiction. This work serves as a  national model at the NIH with several state partnerships including Get Waivered Texas and Get Waivered Nebraska. His work has been written about in the Boston Globe, NPR, and JAMA.  Alister came to train at Harvard after working in state health policy and after getting an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School  of Government where he was a fellow at the Center for Public Leadership. In 2013, he accepted a position  as a Health Policy Aide to Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont given that state’s ongoing transition to a single payer system at the time. Over the subsequent year, he led a team in the Governor’s office responsible for building the communications plan for Vermont’s proposed single payer plan called Green Mountain Care. 

Alister previously served as Chief Resident at MGH/Brigham Hospital. He now leverages his background in politics, healthcare policy, and the field of behavioral economics to use the ED as a place to build programs that serve the needs of vulnerable patients. He leads programs that: transition homeless patients into permanent supportive housing, get patients struggling with addiction into recovery, and offer patients who are unregistered voters the opportunity to register to vote through a program called VotER.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

• Martin A, Baugh J, Chavez T, Leifer J, Kao LS, Dutta S. Clinician Experience of Nudges to Increase ED OUD Treatment. Am J Emerg Med 2020; 211 (1), 211 – Link
• Martin A, Kunzler N, Nakagawa J, Lee B, Wakeman S, Weiner S, Raja A. Get Waivered: A Resident-Driven Campaign to Address the Opioid Overdose Crisis. Ann Emerg Med 2019; 74 (5), 691-696 – Link
• Beshears J, Luca M, Martin A, Lee S, Nudging Hand Hygiene: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to increase Hand Hygiene Compliance Rates. HBS Case Study 2018 March 16, 2018 Product #: 918035-PDF-ENG – Link