Meet Our 2022-23 Fellow

Maegan “Maggie” Pollard, MD (she/her)
Primary Care Psychiatry Fellow

I am truly a central Massachusetts girl at heart, having been raised in Uxbridge and gone to high school in Worcester. Growing up, I enjoyed serving the community through music and art in the form of community theater and community choruses. I attended Ithaca College where I received a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and a minor in Vocal Performance. 

I realized my passion for medicine, specifically in structurally vulnerable populations, through a moment of serendipity that led me to volunteer for a hospice organization in Tompkins County, NY. I greatly enjoyed making music with my hospice patients, and listening to their stories. Those patients are largely the reason why I ended up attending UMass Chan Medical School thereafter. My initial interests were rural medicine, geriatric medicine, and palliative care, but I realized that more broadly, I wanted to care for patients throughout their lifespan, be cheerleaders for their biggest milestones, and help them develop healthy relationships within their communities. This led me to match into family medicine, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I graduated from the Worcester Family Medicine Residency, and my rural home clinic of Barre Family Health Center, in June 2022. 

While getting to know my family medicine patient panel, especially during the pandemic, I realized how much my patients struggled with mental and emotional difficulties, and how much they needed specialized psychiatric and addiction care. It was for this reason that I wanted to pursue an extra year of psychiatric fellowship training, within the greater context of family medicine. Much of my training in medical school and residency had been centered around rural family medicine, as this was the setting in which I initially felt family medicine was able to reach its full potential. But having watched my co-residents thrive in their urban clinic at the Family Health Center of Worcester, I realized that I wanted to experience how family medicine can impact urban clinics. Through my family medicine training I have learned about and led initiatives to dismantle systems of oppression, particularly healthcare disparities arising from racism. In learning more about disparities in mental health care for LGBTQ and BIPOC patients, I wanted to obtain fellowship training in an urban underserved environment. It is for this reason that I am thrilled to be the second Primary Care Psychiatry Fellow at Family Health Center of Worcester. 

When I am not in the office, I try to balance my mind and body with different interests. Being a provider through the pandemic has taught me to have gratitude for a functioning mind and body, as so many have lost these precious things through serious illness. I am grateful to spend time outside and in nature, and enjoy hiking, running, yoga, and camping. I am working towards achieving a backpacking through-hike with my partner next year. I also love spending time being creative with friends and family, either seeing or performing in musicals, writing parodies of Disney tunes, playing Christmas carols on my grandmother's piano, or playing Dungeons and Dragons.