Anthony was born in the rural community of Oley Valley, PA. His father was a crane operator, and his mother was a lunch lady. He worked as a janitor and landscaper during middle and high school, before going to college at Fairleigh Dickinson University where he got both a BS and subsequently an MBA. While completing his undergraduate education Anthony also worked closely with several disinvested communities including adults with autism, youth in the foster care system, and youth in the criminal legal system. Anthony then completed his medical education at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan where he worked closely with the immigrant community in East Harlem. Anthony completed his residency training at the Boston Combined Residency Program at Boston Childrens’ Hospital and Boston Medical Center in the Leadership in Equity and Advocacy Track.
Now Anthony J. Mell is the inaugural Ravin Davidoff Health Equity Fellow at Boston Medical Center. In this fellowship he studies health equity, implementation sciences, and health system management. He applies those skills to intervention-based projects by working with BMC’s Health Equity Accelerator, a health system wide collaboration to improve the healthcare of Boston Medical Center’s patients, specifically focused on health inequities. Anthony also delivers primary care to the children of Boston through his role as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Medical Center.
Finally, Anthony routinely teaches health equity content to residents and medical students through his roles as the Leadership in Equity and Advocacy Course Director and as a Health Equity Rounds Faculty Mentor. In those roles, Anthony created and operationalized an 18-month long health equity curriculum consisting of monthly in person discussion-based sessions and professional development modules with accompanying asynchronous content. He also mentors residents to create specific case-based health equity conferences that are presented to the pediatric department in a grand rounds format. Finally, he has led teaching sessions on racism across multiple departments in his institution and to all levels of learners, medical students, residents, and faculty.
His areas of interest include quality improvement and implementation science, racial socialization, the care of criminal legal system involved youth and youth in the foster care system, the deconstruction of the school to prison pipeline, economic mobility, population health management, and disability justice.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility
Anthony J. Mell has made health equity a core component of his professional and personal life. Anthony grew up in Oley Valley, PA. His father worked most of his life as a crane operator and his mother was a lunch lady and teacher's aide in the Oley Valley school district. Anthony was the first member of his family to go to college and did so only because of full ride scholarship based on a mix of merit and financial need. Anthony's grew up in a multiracial family in a part of Pennsylvania where that was very uncommon. He experienced the effects of racism on his family both from the community and from within his own family from a young age. Additionally, Anthony has epilepsy and has personally struggled through being a doctor with a disability and the stigma, challenges, and insights that come with that. Before becoming a physician Anthony worked with children in the foster care system, adults with learning disabilities, bi-polar disorder, and autism, and new immigrant populations.
Now as a physician Anthony continues to work in the health equity space and with oppressed communities. Some positions that Anthony currently hold include being a fellow in the Ravin Davidoff Executive Health Equity Fellowship where he is being formally trained in health equity implementation science, teaching, and health systems management; being the Course Director for the Leadership in Equity and Advocacy (LEAD) for the Boston Combined Residency Program, where he is tasked with educating a new generation of leaders in health equity; and being a faculty mentor for the Health Equity Rounds Program in the Boston Combined Residency Program through which he mentors residents on how to give grand rounds on specific health equity topics to the entire pediatric department.
Anthony believes that health equity is a core part of his identity as a physician. He hopes to push health systems to think both how they can help oppressed groups but also how they are contributing to their oppression. As he continues in his career he hopes to continue educating residents and medical students while also taking a leading role in embedding health equity into the operations of health systems, Accountable Care Organizations, and the national health landscape.
Publications listed below are automatically derived from MEDLINE/PubMed and other
sources, which might result in incorrect or missing publications. Faculty can
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Elizabeth Agenta, Haritha Aribindi, Omotola Ajayi, Janani Sundaresan, Anthony Mell. Poor Health is Driving Chronic Absenteeism Among High Schoolers — Here’s How Pediatricians Can Help. HealthCity. 2023. View Publication
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Edwards JG, Cheston CC, Kelly CA, Brewster RCL, Williams AR, Mell AJ. A Community-Based COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative. Pediatrics. 2022 Dec 01; 150(6).View Related Profiles. PMID: 36349517
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Jackson J, Mell A. Beyond the Cover-Children's Books as Tools for Positive Social Identity Formation. JAMA Pediatr. 2022 Jul 01; 176(7):637-638. PMID: 35532920
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Pan J, Leader A, Wang E, Ratnapala N, Garvey KL, Gowda R, Moser J, Mell AJ, Pak T, Singer E, Thomas D, Meah Y. Screening for Torture, Asylum, and Trauma among Patients Seeking Care in an Urban Student-Run Free Clinic. Journal of Student-Run Clinics. 2022; 8(1).
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Dembar A, Mell AJ, Hsieh V, Chandrasekan S, Rifkin R, Thomas DC, Meah YS. Reducing Food Insecurity through Personalized Interventions at the East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership. Journal of Student-Run Clinics. 2020; 6(1). View Publication
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Iyer V, Vo Q, Mell A, Chinniah S, Zenerovitz A, Venkiteswaran K, Kunselman AR, Fang J, Subramanian T. Acute levodopa dosing around-the-clock ameliorates REM sleep without atonia in hemiparkinsonian rats. NPJ Parkinsons Dis. 2019; 5:27. PMID: 31815176; PMCID: PMC6884572; DOI: 10.1038/s41531-019-0096-2;
This graph shows the total number of publications by year, by first, middle/unknown,
or last author.
| Year | Publications |
|---|
| 2019 | 1 |
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2022 | 3 |
| 2023 | 1 |
2023 Oley Valley Community Education Foundation:
Distinguished Alumni Award
2022-2023 Boston Medical Center:
BCRP Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Faculty Honor Roll
2019 Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai:
Dr. Howard Rappaport Pediatric Award
2019 Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinaii:
Gold Humanism Honor Society
Anthony is an early career faculty but has a lot of experience with quality improvement, implementations science, and health equity projects and can function as a mentor in that capacity, especially to residents and medical students. Anthony comes from a multiracial and low-income family and has a disability (epilepsy), he is happy to mentor anyone that is looking for a mentor that understands those life experiences.
Available to Mentor as: (Review Mentor Role Definitions):
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Diversity Mentor
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Project Mentor