Digital Mental Health Webinar Archive

Dr. Charles Jonassaint is an associate professor of medicine and a practicing clinical health psychologist with an MHS in epidemiology. He has clinical expertise in chronic disease self-management and cognitive behavioral therapy interventions and has had extensive experience working with health disparities populations, namely, adolescents and adults living with sickle cell disease. He completed his graduate training at Duke University and went on to do a masters in epidemiology and clinical research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is currently funded through the National Institute of Health and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute to lead a program of research in sickle cell disease focused on designing and testing evidence-based digital health interventions for pain and mental health. 

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Professor Rhodes is the Frank L. Boyden Professor of clinical psychology and Director of the Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB). She has devoted her career to understanding and advancing the role of mentoring relationships in the social-emotional, educational, and career development of students. Rhodes has published three books, four edited volumes, and over 250 chapters and peer-reviewed articles on topics related to positive youth development, the transition to adulthood, and mentoring. Her recent research has focused on understanding how peer mentors and other paraprofessionals can bridge gaps in mental health care through a technology-delivered supportive accountability platform. 

Alexandra Werntz received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of Virginia. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the University of Virginia and was funded in-part by AIM Youth Mental Health. Her recent research has focused on understanding how mentors can provide supportive accountability to mentees engaging in digital mental health interventions. Dr. Werntz is also a licensed clinical psychologist practicing in Virginia, specializing in anxiety, depression, end-of-life issues, and trauma. She feels passionately that evidence-based mental health skills do not need to be taught by trained mental health providers, but instead can be taught by and practiced with trained paraprofessionals. With the CEBM team, she is excited to advance the science of training mentors to support their mentees in reaching their full mental health and wellbeing potential.

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Adrian Aguilera, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UC San Francisco. At UC Berkeley, Dr. Aguilera directs the Digital Health Equity and Access Lab (dHEAL), and at UCSF, he directs the Latino Mental Health Research Program (LMHRP) and co-leads SOLVE HealthTech. Dr. Aguilera is trained as a clinical psychologist and is an expert in cognitive and behavioral approaches to treat depression and anxiety.. His research is focused on developing and testing technology-based interventions to address health disparities in low-income and Spanish speaking populations. His work has focused on utilizing digital technologies to improve and implement mental health interventions. He is passionate about leveraging digital health for equity. 

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Theresa ("Tessa") Matson, PhD, MPH is a Collaborative Scientist at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. Dr. Matson’s research seeks to integrate addiction health services within primary care in patient-centered ways that reduce disparities and help patients feel valued and more informed about treatment options. Recent work describes gaps and potential biases in diagnosis and treatment of cannabis use disorder and validates practical tools to improve its recognition in primary care. Dr. Matson currently applies her implementation science expertise on NIDA-funded trials designed to improve the provision of care for opioid and other substance use disorders in primary care settings, including studies to promote equity in the reach of digital interventions for substance use disorders. During her doctoral studies at University of Washington’s Department of Health Systems and Population Health, Tessa completed a predoctoral fellowship at VA Puget Sound, where she studied system-level, organizational-level, and patient-level determinants to receipt of evidence-based treatment for alcohol use disorder and other essential care among vulnerable populations, and applied motivational interviewing and user-centered design principles as approaches to improve patient engagement.

Joseph Glass, PhD, MSW, is an Associate Investigator at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute and Affiliate Associate Professor of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Department of Health Systems and Population Health at University of Washington. He studies how to reach more patients who have substance use disorders with effective treatments. As a clinical social worker by training, he brings a unique perspective to this problem. Much of his recent work, which is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and National Institute on Drug Abuse, applies implementation science methods to study the integration of digital therapeutics into healthcare systems.

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Michael Schoenbaum (PhD in Economics, University of Michigan) is Senior Advisor for Mental Health Services, Epidemiology, and Economics in the National Institute of Mental Health's Division of Services and Intervention Research. He conducts analyses of mental health burden, service use and costs, intervention opportunities, and other policy-related issues, in support of Institute decision-making; and he works to strengthen NIMH's relationships with public and private stakeholders, to increase the public health impact of NIMH-supported research. Dr. Schoenbaum's research has focused particularly on the benefits and costs of interventions to improve health and health care, evaluated from the perspectives of patients, providers, payers and society.

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Sara Becker, PhD, is the Alice Hamilton Professor of Psychiatry and the inaugural director of the Center for Dissemination & Implementation Science. Trained as a clinical psychologist, Becker conducts programmatic research integrating both dissemination and implementation science methods. To date, she has been the principal investigator or scientific lead of 11 projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, totaling approximately $35 million in funding. The overarching objective of her portfolio is to increase the equitable uptake of effective health services in community or clinical settings.

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Dr. Megan Jones-Bell is clinical director of consumer and mental health at Google and gets to think about how to improve health for billions of people. She was formerly chief strategy and science officer at Headspace and helped guide Headspace through its transformation from a meditation app into a comprehensive digital mental health platform, Headspace Health. Megan founded one of the first digital mental health start-ups, Lantern, where she pioneered blended mental health interventions leveraging software and coaching.
Megan started her career at Stanford University where she was an assistant professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. At Stanford and in her work with the European Union Megan developed and disseminated over two dozen evidence-based digital mental health interventions and conducted research in the US, Europe, India, and Brazil. Megan clinically specializes in the treatment of adolescents and young adults and is an expert in the prevention and treatment of eating disorders and obesity.
Megan serves on the Board of the Child Mind Institute, Castilleja School and the Scientific Advisory Board for HFC. Megan is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute Health Innovators Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Megan earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology, graduating cum laude from University of California, San Diego. She received her master’s degree and doctorate in clinical psychology from PGSP-Stanford University, and completed fellowships at Yale University and Stanford University School of Medicine. 

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Dr. Nick Jacobson is a tenure-track assistant professor in the departments of Biomedical Data Science and Psychiatry within the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health in the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. He directs the AI and Mental Health: Innovation in Technology Guided Healthcare (AIM HIGH) Laboratory. Dr. Jacobson researches the use of technology to enhance both the assessment and treatment of anxiety and depression. His work has focused on (1) enhancing precision assessment of anxiety and depression using intensive longitudinal data, (2) conducting multimethod assessment utilizing passive sensor data from smartphones and wearable devices, and (3) providing scalable, personalized technology-based treatments utilizing smartphones. He has a strong interest in creating personalized just-in-time adaptive interventions and the quantitative tools that make this work possible. To date, Dr. Jacobson’s smartphone applications which assess and treat anxiety and depression have been downloaded and installed by more than 50,000 people in over 100 countries. Dr. Jacobson is the principal investigator of an R01 Awarded from the National Institute of Mental Health studying the use of personalized deep learning models to predict rapid changes in major depressive disorder symptoms using passive sensor data from smartphones and wearable devices. 

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Dr. Jessica L. Schleider (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Program at Stony Brook University (SUNY). She also serves as a Faculty Affiliate at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and was an Academic Consultant to the World Bank's Education Global Practice. Dr. Schleider has published over 80 scientific articles and book chapters. She has created or co-created six open-access, single-session mental health programs, which have reached over 30,000 teens and adults to date. Based on these programs, Dr. Schleider and her colleagues wrote a self-help workbook, The Growth Mindset Workbook for Teens. She is also co-editeor of the Oxford Guide to Brief and Low-Intensity Interventions for Children and Young People and wrote a nonfiction book, LITTLE TREATMENTS, BIG EFFECTS (forthcoming, 2023) on how single-session interventions and meaningful moments can transform mental health.

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Lyle Ungar is a Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds appointments in Psychology, Bioengineering, Genomics and Computational Biology, and Operations, Information and Decisions.  He has published over 300 articles, supervised two dozen Ph.D. students, and is co-inventor on ten patents. His current research focuses on using natural language processing and explainable AI for psychological research, including analyzing social media and cell phone sensor data to better understand the drivers of physical and mental well-being.

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In celebration of CBITs' 10-Year Anniversary, our director David Mohr, PhD, and other core faculty in the center reflect on the growth of the field of digital mental health in the past decade and beyond.

David Mohr received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Arizona. He was on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco from 1994 to 2006, when he moved to join the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University. He is the founder and director of the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies (CBITs). Mohr’s work focuses on the design and implementation of digital mental health treatments that fit into the fabric of people’s lives and can be sustainably implemented in real-world settings. His research integrates user-centered design processes to incorporate stakeholder input into the creation and evaluation of digital mental health services. He is also examining methods of harnessing sensor data from devices such as smartphones to identify behaviors, states, and environmental conditions, and using these to design digital mental health tools that are more effective and easier for people to use.

Also featuring talks from the following CBITs Core Faculty:
Rachel Kornfield, PhD
Jonah Meyerhoff, PhD
Kaylee Kruzan, PhD
Maia Jacobs, PhD
Ashley Knapp, PhD
Andrea Graham, PhD

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Saskia is Associate Professor at the Centre for eHealth and Wellbeing Research at the University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands and extraordinary professor at Optentia Research Focus Area, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus. Her work combines technological and psychological perspectives and is multidisciplinary in nature. She uses innovative research designs and concepts to investigate the relationship between technology, adherence and effectiveness (e.g. fractional factorial RCT; engagement). Currently, she works on her personal NWO-Veni grant on using engagement as a mediator to personalize digital mental health interventions. In this innovative new research line, she uses new-to-field and challenging research methods (e.g. a full factorial study including 27 versions of an digital mental health intervention) by e.g. making smart use of the possibilities of technology. She is also editor of the new eHealth handbook with contributions from many influential (inter)national scholars, and lead educator of a massive open online course (MOOC) on eHealth with over 23.000 participants. 

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Katie Shilton is an associate professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research explores ethics and policy for the design of information technologies. She is the PI of the PERVADE project, a multi-campus collaboration focused on big data research ethics. Other projects include participatory design to support automated tools for online content moderators; tracing the influence of privacy discourse in the media and among policymakers; analyzing ethical cultures in computer security research; and understanding and encouraging ethics discussions in mobile application development. Her work has been supported by a Google Faculty Award and multiple awards from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Katie received a B.A. from Oberlin College, a Master of Library and Information Science from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Information Studies from UCLA.

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Aaron Lyon, PhD, (he/him) is a Professor in the University of Washington's (UW) Department of Psychiatry where he serves as Co-Director of the UW ALACRITY Center and the School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center, both of which leverage methods from human-centered design to support effective implementation of evidence-based practices in mental and behavioral health. He is also the Director of the Research Institute for Implementation Science in Education (RIISE) and Associate Editor for the journal Implementation Research and Practice. Dr. Lyon's research focuses generally on increasing the accessibility, efficiency, and effectiveness of interventions for children, adolescents, and families.

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Dr. Francisca Azocar is a licensed clinical psychologist and mental health services researcher. As Vice President of Research and Evaluation at Optum Behavioral Health, she is responsible for the development of data-driven and clinically driven identification and stratification methods for behavioral case management and medical-behavioral integrated services. She is also responsible for vetting the clinical and research background of external vendors, including digital mental health apps to ensure fidelity to evidence-based practices, and demonstration of clinical and financial outcomes.

Dr. Trina Histon is a Senior Principal Consultant in Prevention, Wellness, and Digital Health at Kaiser Permanente's Care Management Institute. Trina has built an extensive career in addressing prevention, wellbeing, behavior change, and emotional health by translating evidence into practice in healthcare in Ireland and the USA. Trina is currently co-lead for Project Chamai (Greek for "grounded") which is deploying an ecosystem of digital mental health tools in Kaiser Permanente to support emotional wellness.

Dr. Julia Hoffman is a licensed clinical psychologist (CA) and head of clinical strategy, mental health for the company Teladoc Health. Dr. Hoffman has led the creation, evaluation, and broad international dissemination of numerous technology-based behavioral health tools. She founded and scaled mobile development for behavioral health at both the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). A recognized thought leader at the intersection of digital and behavioral health, Modern Healthcare named Dr. Hoffman to the Top 25 Emerging Leaders program.

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Sabine Wilhelm, PhD, is chief of Psychology and director of the Center for OCD and Related Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is founder and chair of the Digital Health Think Tank in Psychiatry. A Harvard Medical School Professor, Dr. Wilhelm is recognized as a leading mental health researcher and her early work focused on the development and testing of new cognitive behavioral treatments for adults, adolescents and children suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, tic disorders and body dysmorphic disorder. Her recent research focuses on the use of cutting-edge technology to improve and personalize mental health care for a range of mental health concerns. Dr. Wilhelm has over 300 publications, including seven books, and has given more than 255 lectures on these subjects. She has been successful in obtaining funding from the National Institutes of Health and other sources and was the former president for the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. Dr. Wilhelm received many awards, including the Peter K. Ranney Innovation Award from the World Medical Innovation Forum for her presentation “Bridging the Mental Health Treatment Gap” as well as the Claflin Distinguished Scholar in Medicine Award. She is currently working on smartphone-based treatments for OCD, body dysmorphic disorder and depression. Her ultimate goal is to use technology-based interventions to enhance access to high quality mental health interventions globally. 

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Dr. Eric Kuhn received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University at Albany, State University of New York and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the VA Palo Alto MIRECC and Stanford University School of Medicine. He currently serves as a Clinical Psychologist at the Dissemination and Training Division of the National Center for PTSD and Clinical Associate Professor (affiliated) at Stanford University School of Medicine where he co-leads the Stanford Mental Health Technology and Innovation Hub. Dr. Kuhn is a founder of and leader in NCPTSD’s Mobile Mental Health Program, which has developed a suite of mobile apps designed to address PTSD and related comorbidities and currently directs the Center for Mobile Apps Research Resources and Services (CMARRS). Dr. Kuhn has federally funded programs of research focusing on using technology, both web and mobile, to increase access to and engagement in PTSD and related mental health care and to make care more patient centered, efficient, and effective.

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Professor Araya's research interests include the aetiology of common mental disorders, inequalities and their link to the mental health of populations with special emphasis on international comparisons, and effective treatments for common mental disorders, such as simple and brief interventions using non-medical workers and strong community participation. Several of his current projects use technological platforms to support the delivery of mental health interventions. He is involved in projects in a large number of countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. He has a special interest in projects that integrate mental health problems in the care of other diseases i.e. hypertension, diabetes, HIV and so on.

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Munmun De Choudhury is an Associate Professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. Dr. De Choudhury is best known for laying the foundation of a line of research that develops computational techniques to responsibly and ethically employ social media in understanding and improving our mental health. To do this work, she adopts a highly interdisciplinary approach, combining social computing, machine learning, and natural language analysis with insights and theories from the social, behavioral, and health sciences. Dr. De Choudhury has been recognized with the 2021 ACM-W Rising Star Award, 2019 Complex Systems Society – Junior Scientific Award, over a dozen best paper and honorable mention awards from the ACM and AAAI, and extensive coverage in popular press like the New York Times, the NPR, and the BBC. Earlier, Dr. De Choudhury was a faculty associate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, a postdoc at Microsoft Research, and obtained her PhD in Computer Science from Arizona State University.

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Nick Allen is the Ann Swindells Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oregon, where he Director of Clinical Training. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Ksana Health Inc, a company whose mission is to use research evidence and modern technology to revolutionize the delivery of mental health care through remote behavioral monitoring and adaptive, continuous behavior change support. His research work has particularly focussed on understanding the interactions between multiple risk factors for adolescent onset mental health disorders, and to use these insights to develop innovative approaches to prevention and early intervention. He is the Director of the Center for Digital Mental Health, where his group holds multiple NIH funded grants for work focussing on the use of mobile and wearable technology to monitor risk for poor mental health outcomes including suicide, depression, and bipolar disorder. His group has developed software tools that combine active and passive sensing methods to provide intensive longitudinal assessment of behavior with minimal participant burden. The ultimate aim of these technologies, which are being developed through Ksana Health, is to develop a new generation of “just-in-time” behavioral interventions for early intervention and prevention of mental health problems.

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