Dana Im

About Dana Im

Dana Im, MD, MPP is an emergency physician, health system leader, and researcher whose work focuses on improving the quality, safety, and equity of emergency care. She currently serves as Vice Chair of Quality and Assistant Chief Medical Officer for Mass General Brigham Enterprise Emergency Medicine, where she oversees quality and safety across 10 emergency departments and leads enterprise-wide initiatives in quality improvement, patient safety, clinician performance, and health equity.

Born in South Korea, Dana immigrated to the United States with her family at age eleven. Watching her parents navigate barriers to healthcare as new immigrants inspired her lifelong commitment to patient advocacy and health equity.

Dana graduated summa cum laude from Wellesley College, where she majored in neuroscience and minored in women's studies. During college, she developed a passion for improving access to care for underserved communities, an interest that shaped her subsequent training and career. She was named a University of Cambridge Overseas Scholar and Knafel Fellow, earning a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Public Health degree from the University of Cambridge. She subsequently completed both her Doctor of Medicine (MD) and Master of Public Policy (MPP) at Harvard University, where she was a Gleitsman Fellow for Social Change at the Harvard Kennedy School, focusing on integrating primary care into evolving healthcare delivery systems.

Dana completed the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital before joining the Brigham faculty. She has since held progressive leadership roles as Director of Behavioral Health, Director of Quality and Safety, Director of Quality and Safety for MGB Enterprise Emergency Medicine, and now Vice Chair of Quality and Assistant Chief Medical Officer.

Dana's academic work centers on quality and safety in emergency medicine, with a particular focus on behavioral emergencies, trauma-informed care, agitation management, workplace violence prevention, and systems-based quality improvement. She has led the development of enterprise-wide quality measurement frameworks, standardized behavioral emergency care, and high-reliability quality initiatives across Mass General Brigham. Her current research focuses on integrating agitation management and workplace violence prevention as complementary patient safety priorities, developing standardized quality metrics, and translating operational innovations into scalable frameworks that improve care for both patients and healthcare workers. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, serves on national committees related to emergency medicine quality and psychiatric emergency care, and is a frequent invited speaker on emergency department quality, behavioral emergency management, and workplace violence prevention.