Miya Barnett of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School has been awarded a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Health (NIH). The four-year award for $600,067 is for the project Lay Health Worker Mobilization to Address Disparities in Parent Training Services. This project will develop an implementation intervention that leverages Lay Health Workers (LHW), community members without formalized mental health training, to increase the entry into and engagement in evidence-based parent training programs for low-income Latinos as a strategy to reduce mental health disparities.
This early career award will provide Dr. Barnett with advanced training and skills to launch an independent research program focused on developing and evaluating implementation interventions that reduce mental health disparities for ethnically diverse families. Her work seeks to develop an evidence base for leveraging Lay Health Workers to address determinants of mental health disparities related to client demand for and the supply of evidence-based parent training programs in underserved communities. Specifically, this project will partner with community stakeholders to develop and pilot an implementation intervention that will train LHW to conduct outreach and promote treatment engagement and skill acquisition for Latino families in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT).
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 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 of evidence-based practices, strategies to decrease mental health service disparities for ethnic minority children and families, and the impact of therapist behaviors on treatment outcomes.