Associate Director/Professor-in-Residence
Bonnie T. Zima, MD, MPH is Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Associate Director of the UCLA Center for Health Services and Society. Dr. Zima’s research is dedicated to improving the quality of child mental health care, with priority placed on children enrolled in Medicaid-funded outpatient programs and underserved, at risk child populations. Her research spans national pediatric hospitalization resource utilization and costs, validity of national quality measures, pediatric integrated care models, pediatric workforce development, and use of telehealth and mobile health technologies.
She is Principal Investigator (PI) of a five-year study to pilot test integrated care models for children in two federally qualified health care centers in Chicago, an ongoing study that developed and pilot-tested MH2™, Mobile Health for Mental Health, a web-based application to optimize stimulant medication treatment for children with ADHD. Dr. Zima is also Co-Investigator on a three-year PCORI-funded randomized trial of a telehealth intervention to improve access to community-based child mental health programs from pediatric primary care clinics, a 5-year SAMHSA-funded intervention to improve pediatric work force training related to child complex trauma, lead child psychiatrist on the California Performance Outcomes Measures Study, and core PI for a recently funded five-year study examining the impact of child crisis intervention programs in 16 California counties. Her research has received all three national research awards from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP).
In addition, Dr. Zima is a Member of the U.S. Child and Adult Core Set Annual Review Workgroup, Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, Vice Chair of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Council on Quality Care, standing member of the Behavioral Health and Substance Abuse Steering Committee for the National Quality Forum, and AACAP Committee on Research. She is Consulting Editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Deputy Editor for the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, and Distinguished Fellow of AACAP and APA.
