Sheryl Kataoka Endo, M.D., M.S.H.S.

Dr. Sheryl Kataoka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. A child psychiatrist, Dr. Kataoka's research has focused on improving the access to and quality of mental health care for ethnic minority children and their families, especially through non-traditional delivery systems such as schools. She received her M.D. from George Washington University and her M.S.H.S. from UCLA.

In an analysis of several national data sets, Dr. Kataoka examined who has unmet need for child mental health services and was the first to document the level of unmet need for these services on a national level. Building on that work, Dr. Kataoka has been investigating alternative ways of delivering guideline-based mental health care in schools to low income, primarily minority students. Dr Kataoka is a co-principal investigator of The Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools program (CBITS), a collaborative project with the Los Angeles School District (LAUSD) that provides mental health screening and treatment in schools for students who have been exposed to violence. She is also piloting the CBITS program in the faith-based community, in collaboration with QueensCare Health and Faith Partnership, a non-profit organization that promotes health care to a network of faith organizations in Los Angeles. In addition, Dr. Kataoka is examining the quality of mental health services for special education students through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and in an NIMH grant, she will be studying development and implementation of a quality improvement program for special education counselors focusing on use of evidence based practices.