Faculty

Gregory K. Brown, PhD

Gregory K. Brown, PhD
MPI, INSPIRE Center | PI, Administrative Core | PI, Signature Project | Co-I, Methods Core
gregbrow@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-898-4104

Dr. Brown is a Research Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Center for the Prevention of Suicide in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an internationally renowned expert in suicide prevention whose work has led to transformational advances in the treatment of suicidal individuals. His research aims to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of innovative, targeted interventions designed to reduce vulnerability factors associated with suicide behavior in high-risk populations and to examine and improve the implementation of evidence-based treatments into “real world” settings to prevent suicide. Dr. Brown is the developer, along with his colleague, Barbara Stanley from Columbia University, of the Safety Planning Intervention (SPI), which is a prioritized and specific set of coping strategies and sources of support that can be used during suicidal crises.


Frances K. Barg, PhD, MEd
Co-I, Methods Core
fran.barg@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Dr. Barg is a medical anthropologist and a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, a senior fellow in the Center for Public Health Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, a senior scholar in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Informatics, associated faculty in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care and a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the Director for the Mixed Methods Research Lab. Dr. Barg is also the director for evaluation for the National Center for Integrated Behavioral Health and a NIMH-funded ALACRITY Center. Much of her work is focused on eliciting patient and stakeholder perspectives about the illness experience in order to incorporate those perspectives into interventions and practices. She has served on the editorial board for the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and is a frequent reviewer for journals that publish qualitative and mixed methods health research.


José Bauermeister, PhD, MPH

José Bauermeister, PhD, MPH
PI, STARS
bjose@nursing.upenn.edu
215-898-9993

Dr. Bauermeister is the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, with appointments in the Department of Family and Community Health at the School of Nursing and in the Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine, and Director of the Eidos LGBTQ+ Health Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on translating theoretically informed research to develop and test interventions for racially/ethnically diverse sexual and gender minorities. He has an active portfolio of e-interventions focused on creating personalized content for sexual minority adolescents and young adults. Dr. Bauermeister’s dedication to multidisciplinary work is reflected in his funding portfolio: he is currently the principal investigator and co-investigator of several mixed methods R and U projects in this area, including a life skills intervention for adolescent men who have sex with men (MSM), a HIV/STI testing intervention embedded within the NIH Adolescent Trials Network, and an intersectional stigma intervention for Black and Latinx MSM and transgender women.


Emily M. Becker-Haimes, PhD

Emily M. Becker-Haimes, PhD
PI, Project CALMER
emily.haimes@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-573-5614

Dr. Becker-Haimes is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Mental Health in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an implementation scientist and clinical psychologist whose work is dedicated to improving the quality of mental health services in specialty mental health settings. She is also the clinical director of the Pediatric Anxiety Treatment for Center at Hall Mercer (PATCH) program, which is the only specialty anxiety clinic in Philadelphia to serve youth in the public mental health system. She has conducted research within the Philadelphia community mental health system, with an emphasis on studying how to increase the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy in community settings for anxiety. Dr. Becker-Haimes also has substantial experience in the design of implementation strategies for diverse contexts. She is an expert in exposure therapy for anxiety and has been involved in formative work aimed at leveraging exposure theory to design implementation strategies to support clinicians to overcome their own anxiety about using exposure therapy to their clients.

 


Tami D. Benton, MD

Tami D. Benton, MD
Co-I, Pathways to Care
bentont@chop.edu
215-590-7530

Dr. Benton is the Psychiatrist-in-Chief and Chair of Psychiatry at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), and the holder of the Frederick Allen Endowed Professorship in Psychiatry. She has extensive clinical and research experience in the assessment of children and adolescents with mood disorders and suicidality, and development of clinical programs to support children and families in healthcare settings. Dr. Benton has established a reputation as a leader in the development of integrated mental health and medical care. Further, her expertise extends to health disparities in healthcare education and care focused upon clinicians and services for families. To that end, she serves as the diversity recruitment officer for an institutional K12 fellowship. Dr. Benton is a member of the National Institutes of Mental Health National Advisory Mental Health Council. She is trained in pediatrics, psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine.


Rhonda C. Boyd, PhD

Rhonda C. Boyd, PhD
PI, Pathways to Care
rboyd@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-590-3945

Dr. Rhonda C. Boyd is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Additionally, she is researcher at CHOP PolicyLab. She is the Associate Director of the CHOP’s Child and Adolescent Mood Program in the outpatient clinic where she practices as a licensed psychologist specializing in evaluation and treatment of youth with depression and suicide risk. She has served as a Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on multiple federal grants including those from the National Institutes of Health and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. Recently, she participated on the workgroup for the Congressional Black Caucus Emergency Taskforce on Black Youth Suicide & Mental Health. She has clinical and research expertise in maternal depression, Black youth and families, prevention interventions, adolescent depression, and youth suicide risk.


Lily A. Brown, PhD

Lily A. Brown, PhD
PI, STARS
lilybr@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-746-3346

Dr. Brown is a licensed clinical psychologist, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, and the director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety (CTSA) at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on understanding the intersection of anxiety-related distress and suicide risk. She specializes in cognitive-behavior therapy for anxiety disorders, and has been intensively trained in suicide prevention interventions, including Safety Planning. Dr. Brown has published studies focused on implementing anxiety-focused treatments in a variety of settings, including among civilians, veterans, and active duty military personnel. She has also conducted studies that use digital phenotyping to characterize negative affect among individuals with anxiety-related disorders and suicide risk, and use the electronic health record to facilitate this research. In addition, she researches treatment development for patients with trauma-related distress and suicide risk.


Amber Calloway, PhD

Amber Calloway, PhD
Assistant Professor, Methods Core
Amber.Calloway@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Dr. Calloway is an assistant professor at the Penn Collaborative for CBT and Implementation Science in the Psychiatry Department. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Boston and completed her APA internship and a clinical postdoctoral fellowship at the Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center in Philadelphia, PA. Much of her work has centered on culturally responsive approaches to the implementation of CBT as well as examining mechanisms and processes of change in cognitive behavioral therapies for anxiety disorders in the service of improving treatment effectiveness. At the Penn Collab, Dr. Calloway trains community mental health care providers in a case conceptualization–driven CBT and conducts research on novel implementation strategies to bring EBPs to scale in large systems, including strategies for training and evaluating clinician skill.


Zuleyha Cidav, PhD

Zuleyha Cidav, PhD
Co-I, Methods Core | Co-I, Signature Project
Zuleyha.Cidav@Pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-573-5627

Dr. Cidav is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Mental Health in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a health economist with interests in the economic evaluation of health services, policy, and practice. She is also interested in understanding the impact of health policy and practice on access to, utilization, and costs of healthcare services. She has studied patterns of organization, financing, and delivery of healthcare services to persons with psychiatric and developmental disabilities with a focus on better understanding the economic consequences of mental and developmental disabilities on families, public and private health care service sectors, and society. Her current work focuses on the economic evaluation of initiatives to implement evidence-based practices, incorporating economic analysis into implementation science studies, and developing pragmatic and efficient methods for tracking implementation activities to enable economic evaluation.


Jeremy M. Esposito, MD, MSEd

Jeremy M. Esposito, MD, MSEd
Co-I, Pathways to Care
espositoj1@chop.edu

Dr. Esposito is an Attending Physician in the Emergency Department at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His clinical and research interests focus on increasing awareness and screening of mental health concerns during patient encounters, improving care for patients with behavioral health needs, improving follow-up, and advocating for additional resources needed to address the mental health crisis. He is currently a Practice-Based Scholar in the Center for Violence Prevention at CHOP and is the Director of the Emergency Department Behavioral Health Quality Improvement Committee. Additionally, he is a member of the Youth Suicide Prevention Task Force in Philadelphia, a team member of the Zero Suicide Collaboration, and led a multidisciplinary team at CHOP through a Department of Pediatrics Chair’s Initiative aiming to connect patients with unmet mental health needs to services once identified in Primary Care.


Robert Gallop, PhD

Robert Gallop, PhD
Co-I, Methods Core | Co-I, Signature Project
rgallop@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-349-5922

Dr. Gallop has extensive experience in statistical analysis of psychiatric data, particularly intervention outcome data. He was the primary data analyst/statistician on multiple NIH-funded RCTs involving the treatment/prevention of depression/suicidal risk. He has also been the primary statistician on various trials focused on suicidal ideation and suicidal risk. Dr. Gallop has a longstanding interest in longitudinal and multilevel statistical models for use in analyzing treatment outcome data, having served as the primary statistician for a number of NIH-funded intervention trials that implemented such analyses as well as contributing his own articles on this topic.


Kelly L. Green, PhD

Kelly L. Green, PhD
Co-I, Signature Project
kelgreen@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-746-7337

Dr. Green is a Senior Research Investigator at the Penn Center for the Prevention of Suicide in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and is a nationally-recognized expert in suicide prevention. Her driving goal is to ensure that suicidal individuals seeking help in healthcare settings receive effective, collaborative, and empathic care. To this end, her program of research focuses on the development, evaluation, and refinement of evidence-based practices (EBPs) for suicide prevention, including the Stanley & Brown Safety Planning Intervention, Cognitive Therapy for Suicide Prevention, and Problem Solving Therapy for Suicide Prevention. She also investigates the implementation of EBPs in a variety of large healthcare settings. Dr. Green is also a licensed psychologist and provides training and consultation in effective suicide care and in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to clinicians in diverse settings internationally. In addition, she serves as a Subject Matter Expert in Suicide Prevention for the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services and for the Department of Veterans Affairs Evidence-Based Psychotherapy Program.


Shari Jager-Hyman, PhD

Shari Jager-Hyman, PhD
Co-I, Project CALMER | Co-I, Signature Project
Shari.Jager-Hyman@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-746-3944

Dr. Jager-Hyman is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor at the Penn Center for the Prevention of Suicide in the Perelman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding the development and maintenance of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, as well as the implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs) for suicide prevention in real-world settings. Her research has been supported by the NIMH, PCORI, the VA, and the FAR Fund. As a clinical psychologist and suicidologist, she has trained and supervised clinicians across the country in suicide risk assessment and EBPs, including the Safety Planning Intervention and Cognitive Therapy for Suicide Prevention.


Jason Daniel Jones, PhD

Jason Daniel Jones, PhD
Co-I, Pathways to Care
jonesjd@chop.edu
267-425-1326

Dr. Jones has an extensive background in child and adolescent research, ranging from large scale prospective studies of youth development to randomized clinical trials of adolescent depression prevention. His interdisciplinary research applies an interpersonal framework to advance theunderstanding of risk and protective factors for adolescent depression and suicide and guide prevention efforts. His publication record includes high-impact papers on parenting, adolescent development, and the risk and prevention of youth depression and suicide.


David S. Mandell, ScD

David S. Mandell, ScD
Co-I, Administrative Core | PI, Methods Core
David.Mandell@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-573-7494

Dr. Mandell is the Kenneth E. Appel Professor of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Center for Mental Health. He is trained as a psychiatric epidemiologist, mental health services researcher, and implementation scientist. His research develops and tests implementation strategies to improve quality of care for people with psychiatric and developmental disabilities.  Dr. Mandell has conducted several large-scale, community-based trials of implementation strategies to increase use of evidence-based practices in community settings, and many observational and quasi-experimental studies examining factors associated with implementation, including state policies, organizational characteristics, and characteristics of practitioners.


Danielle Mowery, PhD

Danielle Mowery, PhD
PI, Methods Core
dlmowery@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-746-6677

Dr. Mowery is an Assistant Professor of Informatics and the Scientific Director of the Clinical Research Informatics Core at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Chief Research Information Officer in Penn Medicine. She has a long history of developing clinical natural language processing and machine learning approaches for encoding social determinants of health, depressive symptoms, and psychosocial stressors from text sources for the general and clinical populations. She leverages NLP, data science, and computational methods to integrate and analyze information from unstructured texts and structured clinical data to help clinical investigators better understand disease burden, treatment efficacy, and clinical outcomes. Dr. Mowery collaborates with Penn Medicine Information Services to develop and implement informatics solutions that will help clinicians and patients make better clinical decisions at the point of care.


Maria A. Oquendo, MD, PhD

Maria A. Oquendo, MD, PhD
MPI, INSPIRE Center| PI, Administrative Core | PI, Project CALMER | Co-I, Signature Project
moquendo@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Dr. Oquendo is the Ruth Meltzer Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of expertise are suicidal behavior, aggression/impulsivity, and mood disorders. She is internationally known for her work in delineating predictors of suicidal behavior as well as examining the evolution of these behaviors over time. Her work has also examined the close link between suicidal behavior and mood disorders to disambiguate common and divergent biological contributors to each. Dr. Oquendo conducted one of the first RCTs wherein suicidal behavior was the outcome of interest. Importantly, she has made significant contributions to the understanding of ethical considerations in such study designs and developed classification systems for suicidal behaviors which permit intervention by investigators while minimizing deleterious effects on power. Her classification scheme has become the standard in RCTs of suicidal behavior.


Barbara Stanley, PhD
Co-I, Signature Project | Co-I, Methods Core
stanley@nyspi.columbia.edu

Dr. Barbara Stanley is a Professor of Medical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons. She is also Director of the Suicide Prevention Training, Implementation and Evaluation for the Center for Practice Innovation and Research Scientist in Molecular Imaging and Neuropathology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her research interests include suicidal behavior, self-injury, borderline personality disorder and depression. She investigates these areas from biobehavioral, neurobiological, intervention and implementation science perspectives. Dr. Stanley currently leads a large-scale NIMH-funded implementation trial investigating the effectiveness of implementation strategies of best practices suicide prevention assessment and interventions (Zero Suicide model) in outpatient clinics in New York State. Dr. Stanley, along with Dr. Gregory K. Brown, developed the Safety Planning Intervention, a best practice brief intervention to manage acute suicide risk, and have investigated the feasibility of implementation and effectiveness of this intervention in Veterans Affairs Emergency Department settings. She has also co-developed measures to assess suicide risk (C-SSRS; Suicide-related coping) and fidelity to the Safety Planning Intervention. Dr. Stanley has written extensively on ethical issues in conducting research and has served on the American Psychological Association’s research ethics committees.


Courtney Benjamin Wolk, PhD

Courtney Benjamin Wolk, PhD
PI, Signature Project
Courtney.Wolk@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-746-6099

Dr. Wolk is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Mental Health in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an implementation science researcher and a licensed clinical psychologist. Her research focuses on (1) the implementation of evidence-based practices in mental health in school, community, and healthcare settings and (2) the treatment and long-term sequelae of childhood anxiety disorders, including depression and substance use. She has developed a particular interest in the implementation of evidence-based practices in non-specialty mental health settings such as primary care and schools. Dr. Wolk has experience with implementation strategy development in partnership with large health systems, as well as led the adaptation and implementation of a team training intervention from healthcare for school mental health.



Back to Top