The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have chosen Miya Barnett, an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical and School Psychology at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, as a 2018-2020 Implementation Research Institute (IRI) Fellow.
IRI provides two years of training in mental health implementation science for 10 new fellows each year. Fellows attend two annual week-long trainings at the Center for Mental Health Services Research, within the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, at Washington University in St. Louis. They also conduct a site visit to an NIH-funded implementation research project and receive mentorship from leading implementation scientists in the preparation of a competitive grant proposal to NIH.
Implementation research is the study of processes for integrating empirically supported treatments (ESTs) into usual care, and holds high promise for reducing the gap from treatment discovery to community practice. Only 40-50% of people with mental disorders receive any treatment and of those receiving treatment, a fraction receive what could be considered “quality” treatment.
Miya Barnett is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology and a licensed psychologist. She received her B.A. in Psychology and Hispanic Studies from Lewis & Clark College and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Central Michigan University. She completed her pre-doctoral internship at University of Miami, Mailman Center for Child Development. As a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA, Dr. Barnett was involved in the NIMH-funded 4KEEPS Study, which investigated the implementation of evidence-based practices (EBP) within a large-scale reform of children’s mental health services. Dr. Barnett was an NIMH Child Intervention, Prevention, and Services (CHIPS) fellow.
Dr. Barnett specializes in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), and she has provided PCIT training and consultation for community clinicians nationally and internationally. Her research interests include dissemination and implementation, strategies to decrease mental health service disparities for ethnic minority children and families, and the impact of therapist behaviors on treatment outcomes.