Personal Statement
I am a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and the Director of the Division of Population Health. I am also a Core Investigator at the HSR&D Center for Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, and the Director of the VA Virtual Specialty Care QUERI Center.
For the last 25 years, my research has focused on access to care. I have published a framework for conceptualizing access to care in the digital age that incorporates virtual care technologies. I have conducted clinical trials to test the effectiveness of virtual care technologies to facilitate the delivery of evidence-based mental health services in rural primary care clinics. I have also conducted implementation trials to test the effectiveness of strategies to promote the uptake of virtual care technologies by primary care patients and providers. My research has been supported by NIMH, NIAAA, PCORI, and VA HSR&D.
Personal Statement
My clinical interests include diagnosis and psychopharmacology of complex mood and anxiety disorders and psychosis. My research program investigates the molecular neuroscience of behavior using animal models with a focus on the involvement of the serotonin system and the neurocircuitry and plasticity involved in stress and addiction.
My lab uses rat and mouse models to investigate stress and addiction mechanisms. The lab is unusual because we pursue a very broad range of methods, including molecular, cellular, neuroanatomical, and behavioral levels of organization. We have focused on serotonin receptors historically but increasingly we are using novel molecular and genetic tools to dissect the involvement of key neural circuits in behavioral models of stress and/or addiction.
The main strategies include a range of behavioral models, intersectional transgenic and viral-mediated gene transfer manipulations of gene expression, neuropharmacology, engineered receptors (DREADDs), fiber photometry, calcium imaging, two-photon microscopy, RNAseq and RTqPCR (using RiboTag pull-down). We are trying to push the envelope in developing and using methods that allow us very precise manipulations or readouts from specific pathways such as the projections from nucleus accumbens to ventral tegmentum or lateral habenula to dorsal raphe nucleus. We are also exploring the role of microglia, the innate immune cells in the brain, during early stages of drug and alcohol withdrawal in advance of typical activation of neuroinflammation.
Personal Statement
I am a Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Addictions Division in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington. I am also the clinical director of addictions treatment services at Harborview Medical Center, and work in the psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery services.
I am board-certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology with Added Qualifications in Addiction Psychiatry, and the American Board of Addiction Medicine. A Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, I am on the editorial board and a reviewer for several scientific journals and holds a number of research grants from the National Institute of Health.
Personal Statement
I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist also trained in pediatrics. The longstanding theme of my research has been on the detection of psychosocial problems in children and families, with a particular interest in what happens at the interface between primary care and mental health care. My initial clinical work as a pediatrician involved families in which child abuse was suspected, and thus my early research on detection of psychosocial problems involved how clinicians might best learn that a given family was experiencing some form of violence.
When I returned to training and became a child psychiatrist, my focus shifted to the more general issue of how, in the course of clinician-child-parent interactions, psychosocial issues were asked about, disclosed, and discussed. I have explored this question from a number of angles, including work in different cultures in the US (African-American, Latin American, American Indian), in different countries (Brazil, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Iran), in differences attributable to provider gender, across a range of sensitive issues (including suicide and end-of-life decision-making), and across clinical settings (pediatric and adult primary care, emergency care, and chronic disease management).
