alumni news

Alum Named Vice President of Community Health and Equity at Lifespan

Carrie Bridges Feliz will lead efforts to improve the health of populations the organization serves by addressing the social determinants of health and closing disparities in care.

School of Public Health alum Carrie Bridges Feliz (SPH’03) has been named vice president of community health and equity at Lifespan, a not-for-profit health system based in Providence, Rhode Island.

“I am incredibly honored to take on this new role,” says Bridges Feliz. “This opportunity really signifies the organization’s broader commitment to community health and well-being, and their understanding of where they should be investing more time, resources, and attention. I am excited to build out a team of experts to help propel us forward in this next generation of what healthcare can and should look, feel, and be like in service to all people.”

Bridges Feliz joined Lifespan in 2015 as the director of the community health services department. Under her leadership, she reorganized and rebranded the department as the Community Health Institute and worked to apply a public health framework to their mission and work. Since then, she has established new health promotion and disease prevention programs and community partnerships, helped bring community health workers into the Lifespan system, and led the development of the Connect for Health program, which screens patients for health-related social needs and helps them in navigating and accessing assistance programs, housing, healthy foods, and more.  

In her new role, Bridges Feliz will continue to lead and expand upon these efforts to improve the health of the populations that Lifespan serves, which includes Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts, and parts of Connecticut. She hopes to bring her public health expertise and leadership around tackling the social determinants of health to the position to develop a population health strategy across the entire Lifespan health system that meets the diverse needs of populations served by the Lifespan system, values input from communities, remedies historical harms, and closes disparities in access and quality of care.

“I cannot shy away from my focus around the social drivers of health and making sure we are improving how we collect data and value community expertise to advance care,” she says. “I am deeply committed to creating the conditions that promote health where people live, work, learn, and play, so these are among my top priorities as I step into this role.”

While at SPH, Bridges Feliz says she gained essential public health skills that have carried her through various roles in her career so far.

“One of the signature features of the program at SPH is that it is an applied degree,” she says. “I learned how to truly be a critical thinker and to approach public health problem solving by finding the right questions to ask, defining a problem, and engaging with the appropriate teams, partners, and diverse perspectives to address it. These are the fundamentals that apply in the healthcare setting, and I am very appreciative that I gained these from BU.”