People

 

Kenneth Wells, MD, MPH, is the UCLA Research Director for the UCLA/VA Center of Excellence for Veteran Resilience and Recovery. He is the Director of the Center for Health Services and Society at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, David Weil Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at David Geffen School of Medicine and Professor of Health Policy and Management, Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA. He is an attending psychiatrist at VA Greater Los Angeles (VAGLA) and affiliated adjunct staff at RAND. He is the Associate Director of the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program. Dr. Wells’ work focuses on Community Partnered Participatory Research to improve equity in services access, quality and outcomes for persons with behavioral health needs. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He and community co-lead Loretta Jones of Healthy African American Families, with over 100 academic and community partners, received the 2014 Team Science Award of the Association of Clinical and Translational Science for Community Partners in Care (CPIC), a group-randomized trial of community engagement to improve outcomes for depressed adults in under-resourced communities. He co-led the American Red Cross post-Katrina mental health recovery effort in New Orleans and was UCLA lead for the Los Angeles Community Disaster Resilience initiative, and is currently joint PI for an evaluation of implementation of crisis intervention programs in California.

 

Sam Tsemberis, PhD, clinical psychologist, developed the HOUSING FIRST (HF) program. HF operates on the belief that housing as basic human right and provides recovery focused supports. HF programs operate across the US, Canada, many EU countries, Australia, and NZ. Dr. Tsemberis is Founder and CEO of the Pathways Housing First Institute which provides consultation, technical assistance, presentations and workshops— in person and online across the globe. Dr. Tsemberis is author of Housing First, Hazelden Publishing and co-author of Housing First, Oxford University Press as well as many research articles and book chapters. HF is fundamental to most local national plans to end chronic homelessness. It is an EVIDENCE BASED program with a robust research evidence base. Findings from several randomized control trials report an 80% rate of housing stability for HF compared to 40% housing stability for traditional homeless programs. Studies have been conducted in the US, Canada and France (SAMHSA NREPP; Mental Health Commission of Canada and Un Chez Soi D’Aboard). Dr. Tsemberis founded Pathways to Housing —first in NYC in 1992 and then Pathways to Housing agencies in Washington DC (2003), Philadelphia PA, and Burlington Vermont (2009). In 2018 Pathways introduced a HF program in Atlanta GA in partnership with Step Up on Second. Dr. Tsemberis also serves as the ED for the UCLA-Greater Los Angeles VA Center of Excellence for Training and Research on Veterans Homelessness and Recovery and serves on the faculty at UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Dr. Tsemberis honors and awards include the Distinguished Contribution to Independent Practice award from the AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (2016) and the Meritorious Service Cross awarded by the Lieutenant Governor of Canada (2018).

 

Sonya Gabrielian, MD, MPH, is the VA Research Director of the UCLA/VA Center of Excellence on Veteran Resilience and Recovery. She is a psychiatrist and health services researcher at the VA Greater Los Angeles (VAGLA) and an Assistant Professor at UCLA. She is a VA HSR&D Career Development Awardee, an investigator at the Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, & Policy (CSHIIP); the Director of the Health Services Unit at the Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC); and an Affiliated Researcher at the National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans. Her research focuses on implementation approaches to improve housing retention and community functioning among homeless adults with serious mental illness. Dr. Gabrielian is also a practicing psychiatrist in VAGLA’s homeless program and has strong interests in mentoring psychiatry trainees who are interested in serving vulnerable populations.

 

Alexander Young, MD, MSHS, is a psychiatrist and health services researcher. He is Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Interim Director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Interim Physician-in-Chief of the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital. He is Associate Director of the Veterans Desert Pacific MIRECC Health Services Unit at the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Healthcare System. He is board certified in Psychiatry and Clinical Informatics. Dr. Young focuses on community psychiatry, serious mental illness, and studying and improving the quality and value of healthcare, with a particular emphasis on mental health, implementation science and health informatics. He has led research that characterized health disparities nationally for people with depression and schizophrenia, highlighting disparities by race, gender and age.  He has led numerous studies to improve health equity, reduce disparities, and improve the care of underserved and disadvantaged populations.  These have included research grants studying implementation of effective practices, informatics systems to support improved care, and interventions to improve care. Recent grants from the VA, NIMH and other funders include studying an internet-based, peer-supported system that provides tailored education regarding diet and exercise to people with mental illness; studying computerized elicitation of preferences of mental health patients; evaluating a housing first program; and studying the implementation and effectiveness of a Patient-Centered Medical Home with integrated mental health care to improve the primary care of people with serious mental illness.  He has a current grant from VA studying the use of mobile sensor data for illness self-tracking and to improve mental health care.

 

Roya Ijadi-Maghsoodi, MD, MSHPM, is the UCLA Associate Research Director of the UCLA/VA Center of Excellence on Veteran Resilience and Recovery. She is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and an Investigator at CSHIIP. Dr. Ijadi-Maghsoodi’s research focuses on improving care for vulnerable populations, including homeless families and high-risk youth with trauma. She received an AACAP NIDA Physician Scientist Program in Substance Abuse K12 award to focus on improving care for homeless families with parental substance use disorders. Dr. Ijadi-Maghsoodi is also interested in child mental health advocacy and serves on the Cal-ACAP Government Affairs Committee and as Vice President of the Southern California Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and provides asylum evaluations for Physicians for Human Rights.

 

Ippolytos Kalofonos, MD, PhD, is a UCLA Associate Research Director of the UCLA/VA Center of Excellence on Veteran Resilience and Recovery.  He is a psychiatrist and a medical anthropologist. He is jointly appointed as an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Center for Social Medicine and the Humanities the UCLA International Institute as well as the Department of Psychiatry. As a clinician at VAGLA, he performs both medication-management and psychotherapy for psychosis.  Dr. Kalofonos’ current research aims to reduce self-stigma and isolation among persons with psychotic disorders, and build community and solidarity amongst Veterans who struggle with both severe mental illness and homelessness. He has previously studied individual, family, and community perceptions and experiences of first episode psychosis in the Latino community of San Fernando Valley. He also has conducted ethnographic research with a residential program for youth experiencing psychosis in Anchorage, Alaska. His past research investigated community responses to AIDS treatment in Central Mozambique, particularly focusing on experiences of hunger and the role of livelihood in recovery from AIDS.

 

Peter Capone-Newton, MD, MPH, PhD, is a preventive medicine physician at VALGA. He serves as the Tobacco Cessation Lead Clinician for the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center, delivering tobacco cessation clinical services in every modality including individual, group, telephone, individual clinical video telehealth (CVT), and group CVT, across the entire VAGLAHS. As an Assistant Professor at UCLA, he is the VA site director of the ACGME accredited UCLA Preventive Medicine residency. He guides the development of the social determinants of health curriculum and assists with quality improvement and population health initiatives in the Interprofessional Academic Homeless Patient Aligned Care Team (HPACT –VA’s medical home for homeless Veterans) Center of Excellence in Primary Care Education (CoEPCE IA-HPACT). An expert in motivational interviewing (MI), he taught first year medical students in MI based interviewing at the University of California (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) for 6 years. He regularly mentors trainees from undergraduates to physician fellows, most often at the intersection of medical care and social need.

 

Jared Greenberg, MD, is an investigator with the UCLA/VA Center of Excellence on Veteran Resilience and Recovery, CSHIIP, and the Desert Pacific MIRECC, and an Assistant Professor at UCLA. His research focuses on improving resilience and functioning among adults with serious mental illness and experiences of homelessness. He serves as the Deputy Director of the VAGLA Psychosis Clinic, where he has an active role in teaching psychiatry residents who treat Veterans with psychosis. He also maintains his own active clinical practice at VAGLA.

 

Lucinda Leung, MD, MPH, PhD, is an investigator with the UCLA/VA Center of Excellence on Veteran Resilience and Recovery, a VA HSR&D Career Development Awardee, and an Assistant Professor at UCLA. She is a general internal medicine physician and health services researcher whose research focuses on improving care for adults with mental and physical comorbidities; specifically, she evaluates the impacts of integrated primary care and mental health services on healthcare utilization, medical spending, and clinical outcomes.

 

Nicole Goodsmith MD, PhD, is a psychiatrist and health services researcher at UCLA and the Greater Los Angeles VA]. Her clinical and research interests focus on women’s mental health, trauma, and serious mental illness. As a current recipient of the AHRQ/PCORI Stakeholder-Partnered Implementation Research and Innovation Translation (SPIRIT) K12 award, she is examining factors impacting healthcare utilization for women Veterans with serious mental illness. She recently completed a qualitative study with the LA County Department of Mental Health looking at how pregnancy and parenting are addressed in the mental health setting. In the long-term, she hopes to improve equity and access to high-quality mental health care for vulnerable and historically marginalized populations, and to further our understanding of the unique needs of women with serious mental illness.

 

Taylor Harris PhD, MA, is a National Center on Homelessness among Veterans fellow based at the VA Greater Los Angeles. Guided by her professional training in the fields of clinical psychology and social work, Dr. Harris’ research agenda focuses on improving housing and services that address mental health and behavioral health for persons with experiences of homelessness. She received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for her dissertation which examined multi-level socio-ecological factors that affect smoking behavior trajectories from homelessness to housing. Currently, Dr. Harris serves as the PI for a pilot project funded through Toward Homelessness Recovery and Integration for Veterans (THRIVe) to improve smoking cessation services for homeless-experienced Veterans housed through HUD-VASH.

 

Kimberly Lynch, MD, MSHPM, is a primary care internist in the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA and a VA advanced fellow at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. Dr. Lynch’s research focuses on quality Improvement and implementation of programs geared for high risk patients. Dr. Lynch is currently the lead on a UCLA/VA Center of Excellence grant improving care at the West Los Angeles Care, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Service (CTRS) for Veterans experiencing homelessness. She finished residency training in Primary Care and Social Internal Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, her medical degree from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and her undergraduate education in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University.

 

Matthew McCoy, PhD, is a medical and psychological anthropologist at Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, and Policy (CSHIIP) at the VA Greater Los Angeles where he researches Veteran homelessness as a Principal Investigator for two nationally-funded projects on alternative housing options for unsheltered Veterans experiencing homelessness. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. McCoy led quality improvement efforts in a novel “safe-camping” site for Veterans experiencing homelessness built on the grounds of the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center called the Care, Treatment, and Rehabilitation Service (CTRS) from a pilot grant funded by the COE. As this tent community transitioned to a “tiny shelter” community, Dr. McCoy has helped to design and implement an on-site encampment medicine team and Veteran Engagement Committee. At the VA, Dr. McCoy also conducts a range of qualitative projects, researching experiences of trauma, LGBTQIA+ representation, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare, Veteran engagement groups, substance use, and suicide among US Military Veterans and workforce burnout and retention among VA healthcare workers. Dr. McCoy is also an implementation scientist at the UCLA Center for Health Services and Society where he researches gravely disabled homelessness and outpatient conservatorship in Los Angeles County. His research has been published in Ethos, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Pathogens, Irish Journal of Anthropology, among others. His current book project, All Will Have Been for Nothing: The Consolation of Pessimism and the Ethics of Futility in Belfast is based on 17 months of ethnographic research conducted with current and former paramilitary members, ex-combatants, and conflict victims of “the Troubles” (1969-1998), residing in Irish Republican and pro-British Loyalist social housing estates in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

 

Kyle Nelson PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the UCLA/VA Center of Excellence on Veteran Resilience and Recovery. Dr. Nelson’s research agenda explores how interactions with institutions and professionals shape tenants’ housing and homelessness trajectories. He will be working on an evaluation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development-VA Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program to improve housing retention among Veterans with HUD-VASH vouchers. Previously, he conducted a two-year ethnographic study investigating how legal assistance affects the administration and outcomes of civil justice in Los Angeles County eviction proceedings.

 

 

Angira Jhaveri, LCSW, in her current roles is the Training and Education Coordinator for the Center of Excellence. She is a Social Worker in the homeless program at the Greater Los Angeles VA Medical Center. Ms. Jhaveri started her carrier in Social Work with Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, where she provided psychotherapy to children, adolescents and families impacted by mental health concerns. Ms. Jhaveri joined the Veterans Health Administration in 2012 (Bay Pines, FL) as a HUD-VASH Social Worker. She later joined the Greater Los Angeles VA Medical Center in 2014 as a Screening Clinic Social Worker, providing same day access to Veteran’s that are looking for housing and referral for same day medical and psychiatric services. In 2016 Ms. Jhaveri started as a Program Manager for the Homeless Patient Aligned Care Team (HPACT). This clinic supported Primary Care, Mental Health care, Housing and other ancillary services to homeless Veterans. In 2018 Ms. Jhaveri was given the opportunity to be the Assistant Chief of the Domiciliary Program here at Greater Los Angeles VA Medical Center, which provides substance abuse treatment, MH treatment and other supportive services. Ms. Jhaveri carried out that duty until January 2020, where she found herself wanting to go back to her passion, Training and Education.