Scholarly Expertise: Settings

Christina N. Clayton

Christina has been in the behavioral health field since 1993, primarily serving adults who live with severe mental health issues, substance use, experience chronic homelessness, suffer from poor physical health, trauma and any number of co-occurring issues.

Prior to joining UW, she spent 25 years working in and managing numerous clinical programs including: HIV/AIDS housing and health care, school-based mental health, substance use outreach and treatment, homeless mental health outreach, intensive case management, assertive community treatment, crisis respite, integrated care, housing first and other evidence-based practices.  She has provided licensure supervision, training and consultation, and has worked on multi-disciplinary teams in a number of settings.  She highly values her years of clinical direct service and program management experience.

She has also been involved with the UW School of Social Work since getting her MSW, working with dozens of graduate and undergraduate students, teaching courses and workshops, presenting on panels and she served as Interim Assistant Dean and Director of Field Education from 2023-24.

For the Northwest MHTTC, a SAMHSA-funded regional training & TA center (2018-24), Christina co-directed the team and helped plan and oversee training for the mental health workforce in HHS Region 10 (AK/ID/OR/WA).  Activities include live webinars, research/practice briefs, online self-paced courses, learning communities and intensive cohort-based training. Most of this training was conducted virtually in collaboration with numerous faculty, instructional designers and presenters.

Currently, she humbly serves as Co-Chair for the PBSCI Department’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Staff Committee.

Starting in fall 2024, Christina is now co-directing the Pacific West HUB of the new national Center for Mental Health Implementation Support (CMHIS), led by Stanford’s Center for Dissemination and Implementation (CDI). The MHDIS project will build the capacity to select and implement evidence-supported practices and programs, sharing pragmatic, accessible guidance and the West Coast MHTAC serves HHS regions 9 and 10.

She is grateful to all the staff and faculty who choose to work in this field, as it is their collective energy, passion, dedication and commitment to social justice that supports the people we serve and brings real change to our communities.  Most importantly, she is honored to work with people who every day, live their experience and share their journey through advocacy as they strive for a world where behavioral health is adequately supported and everyone can thrive equitably.

Bill O’Connell

As part of my faculty appointment, I am Director of the Behavioral Health Support Specialist (BHSS) Workforce Development Project.  My responsibilities include oversight of curriculum development, practicum guidelines, development of community partnerships and advocacy for reimbursement pathways.

Behavioral Health Support Specialist Workforce Development Project

I am working with a talented project team to develop a competency framework and curriculum to prepare a bachelor level Behavioral Health Support Specialist (BHSS).  A BHSS will deliver brief, culturally responsive, evidence-informed interventions for common mental and behavioral health conditions under supervision in a team-based setting.  The BHSS will use a measurement-based care approach to ensure patients are receiving the right level of care at the right dose.  Crisis services, integrated care and specialty behavioral healthcare are examples of work environments that will benefit from a BHSS.  Our project goal is to support higher educational programs across the state implement the BHSS clinical training program in academic year 25-26. During my time working as a primary care behavioral health consultant, I frequently met with senior patients from diverse backgrounds who had never spoken with a behavioral health provider in their lifetime despite experiencing moderate to severe symptoms of a mental or behavioral health condition.  One reason I found unacceptable was lack of access to services.  The bachelor level Behavioral Health Support Specialist role is one solution of many to improving access to care and expanding the available workforce.

Scholarship

My current scholarship focuses on behavioral health workforce development and best practices in teaching and training bachelor level intervention specialists for behavioral health settings. In addition to my current role as BHSS project co-investigator, I served as principal investigator for a philanthropic gift from Robert Craves to expand access to school counseling services at Bailey Gatzert Elementary School in the Yesler Terrace neighborhood of Seattle. I also engaged in community-based research with Village Spirit Center for Community Change and Healing located in the Central District to produce a mental health needs assessment for residents who had experienced homelessness prior to obtaining secure housing. Previous peer reviewed publications focused on counselor preparation for employment in behavioral health agencies, best practices in counselor preparation and ethical dilemmas in counselor practice.

Certification and Licensure

I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) in the State of Washington and a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Colorado.  Additionally, I am a National Certified Counselor (NCC), and an Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS) through the National Board of Certified Counselors and the Center for Credentialing and Education.

Career Roles

  • Associate Professor (WOT), Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington (2022-Present).
  • Regional Director of Behavioral Health and Primary Care Behavioral Health Consultant for One Medical Seniors (2018-2021)
  • Department Chair of Leadership and Professional Studies at Seattle University (2014-2017)
  • Associate Professor of Clinical Mental Health and School Counseling at Seattle University (2010-2019)
  • Associate Professor of Clinical Mental Health and School Counseling at Xavier University in Ohio (2001-2010)
  • Past President of the Ohio Counseling Association (2006-2009)
  • Assistant Clinical Director for Talbert House Inc. (1998-2001)
  • *Private Practice Therapist and Consultant (1997-2010)
  • Adult Therapist for Clermont Counseling Center in Milford, Ohio (1994-1997)
  • Crisis Intervention Specialist for Talbert House Inc. (1990-1993)
  • Adult Therapist for Care Unit Chemical Dependency Hospital in Ohio (1988-1990)

*I owned a private practice in the Greater Cincinnati Area for twelve years providing behavioral medicine consultation in an integrated pain management practice, clinical consultation to behavioral health organizations, and training and education on ethical and professional issues for mental health providers.  Additionally, I provided individual, couple and family counseling in a group psychology practice with a special focus on serving the LGBTQI+ community and persons with trauma history.

Koriann Cox

Koriann Cox, Ph.D. graduated from Northeastern University and is licensed in the state of Washington. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in co-occurring addiction and mental health and has a range of clinical experience with a variety of concerns including depression, anxiety, trauma, reproductive mental health, and substance and behavioral addictions.  Dr. Cox’s strengths-focused approach emphasizes the mutual development of goals for therapy and ongoing collaboration between herself, the patient, and the care team. Dr. Cox uses a number of therapeutic modalities including but not limited to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Cognitive Processing Therapy.

Alissa Hemke

I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist with interests in medical education, infant and early childhood mental health, and psychotherapy. I direct psychotherapy training for child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) fellows, co-lead the CAP fellows’ didactic curriculum, and coordinate the CAP training experiences of general psychiatry residents.

My clinical work includes treatment in the outpatient setting for young children through adolescents, working closely with their families. In my own work, and in teaching trainees, I am passionate about psychiatrists supporting families comprehensively. I seek to use not only medications (if appropriate) but also behavioral/psychotherapeutic approaches.

My research focuses on expanding behavioral treatments for young children by involving peer supports—caregivers who have previously participated in the programs for their own children—as members of the care team. I am especially interested in this increasing access and fit of the treatment for underserved communities, and currently work in partnership with the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic.

Charles C. Engel

Dr. Charles Engel (he/him) is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Core VA HSR&D Investigator in the Seattle Center for Innovation, Codirector of the Center’s Advanced Fellowship on Learning Health Systems, and Adjunct Physician Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation. Engel’s work focuses on trauma-informed health systems and strategies for improving the quality of primary care for chronic mental and physical health conditions. His research has covered traumatic injury and post-trauma syndromes ranging from blast injury, mild traumatic brain injury and Gulf War syndrome to PTSD and depression. Engel is experienced at mixed qualitative and quantitative methods and has led large pragmatic randomized trials, program evaluations, and implementation science studies. He has authored or coauthored nearly 200 scholarly papers, including in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and the American Journal of Psychiatry. Funding for his work has come from the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense and other organizations. Before joining UW Psychiatry and the AIMS Center in 2021, Dr. Engel was Senior Physician Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation from 2013 to 2020 and Associate Chair (Research) at Uniformed Services University’s Department of Psychiatry from 2001-2013. Engel has served on the board of directors of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, has testified twice before Congress, received a number of awards, and delivered invited lectures in over 10 countries. He received both his MD and MPH from the University of Washington.

Mary Hatch

Dr. Hatch is an Associate Professor at the Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute (ADAI), Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, UW School of Medicine. Her research interests are in the development and testing of behavioral and pharmacologic interventions for substance use disorders and HIV prevention. In particular, her work has focused on the intersection of substance use and HIV-related sex and drug risk behaviors from both the consumer and workforce perspectives, and on implementation factors that affect uptake of interventions. She has held multiple and varied roles in research projects since 1994, and has long-standing experience developing, implementing, and overseeing large-scale multi-site clinical trials with community treatment providers. In addition to her work at the University of Washington, Dr. Hatch is a licensed clinical psychologist at UWMC Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic. Her clinical work specializes in the treatment of drug and alcohol addictions and co-occurring depression, anxiety and trauma.

Bryan Hartzler

In two decades at UW, Dr. Hartzler’s principal focus has been on the dissemination and implementation of empirically-supported health services for persons with substance use disorders. To date, this includes local, regional, national, and international collaborations, encompassing federally-funded work with diverse community-based settings (i.e., addiction care, mental health, primary and specialty medical care, criminal justice, HIV care, schools, faith-based organizations), including those affiliated with the NIDA Clinical Trials Network.  As director of the UW Center for Advancing Addiction Health Services (CAAHS), he oversees a broad portfolio, including:  1) the SAMHSA-funded Northwest Addiction Technology Transfer Center (Northwest ATTC), which provides universal, targeted, and intensive technical assistance to the addiction workforce in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington 2) regional contribution to SAMHSA’s national Opioid Response Network (ORN), 3) a host of externally-sponsored implementation projects with single-state authorities as well as other organizations, and 4) contribution to NIH-funded and intramural health services research.  In professional endeavors that span a science-to-service continuum, Dr. Hartzler seeks to promote adoption and implementation of useful treatment and recovery practices in community settings where they may benefit persons with substance use disorders.