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Dream Team  
   
Enrico

Enrico Castillo, M.D.

Dr. Enrico Castillo completed psychiatry residency at Columbia University.  Dr. Castillo obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and his MD with a Concentration in Underserved Populations from the University of Pittsburgh.  During residency he conducted research on antipsychotic prescribing practices in New York State and was selected as an American Psychiatric Association/SAMHSA Minority Fellow, which included a grant with which he created an online series of filmed interviews focused on Asian American mental health.  In 2014-15 he completed a clinical fellowship in Public Psychiatry at Columbia University.  He spent that fellowship year as a staff psychiatrist on a north Bronx Assertive Community Treatment team and a “housing first” outreach team for the chronically street homeless in lower Manhattan with the organization Janian Medical/Project for Psychiatric Outreach to the Homeless.  During that year, he continued his research as a New York State Office of Mental Health Policy Scholar, completing a pilot project to develop and validate a Medicaid-based algorithm to identify those with treatment-resistant psychotic illness who may benefit most from a trial of clozapine.

Dr. Castillo is interested in community-academic partnerships, outreach-based care models, the reverse-integration of primary care with behavioral health, and healthcare policy.  Common themes are a focus on the behavioral and physical health of underserved and at-risk populations, like those with serious mental illness and the chronically homeless.  As a Clinical Scholar, he hopes to work with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health at the intersection of health policy and mental health services research, with projects focused on health system reform to address social determinants of health and mandatory outpatient treatment.

   
 

Jared Greenberg, M.D.

Dr. Jared Greenberg is an adult psychiatrist who completed his psychiatry residency at the Semel Institute of UCLA. He is currently pursuing a two-year Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Health Research and Treatment at the Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC) based at the West Los Angeles VA. Dr. Greenberg obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley and later completed post-baccalaureate pre-medical studies at San Francisco State University. Prior to matriculating to the Keck School of Medicine of USC, he worked as a case manager on a culturally-focused Assertive Community Treatment team serving persons with serious mental illness and substance use disorders under the auspices of UCSF. While at San Francisco State University as well as during medical school, he was a student leader of health policy reform efforts to expand healthcare access at the local, state, and national levels through his work with such organizations as California Student Physicians for Healthcare Reform and the American Medical Student Association. During residency, while serving as chief resident of a schizophrenia-focused inpatient unit at the West Los Angeles VA, he participated in research focused on the social context of housing transitions among homeless-experienced veterans with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.

Dr. Greenberg is interested in mental health services research with particular interests in sociocultural factors, serious mental illness, substance use disorders, and psychosocial treatments including evidence-based psychotherapies for psychotic disorders. He is currently preparing a proposal to study the cultural context of community integration in homeless-experienced Latino veterans with serious mental illness. He is also involved in an evaluation of an Assertive Community Treatment program for homeless and formerly homeless veterans.

   
Brian Hurley, M.D.

Brian Hurley, M.D.

Dr. Brian Hurley completed an addition psychiatry fellowship at New York University and general psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital;. He earned his undergraduate degree with a double major in Biochemistry and Neuroscience and a minor in Political Theory from the University of California, Los Angeles. He obtained his medical degree from University of Southern California, where he also obtained his MBA. Dr. Hurley is currently as the national treasurer of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He is also the delegate from GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality to the American Medical Association. Dr. Hurley previously served as the National President of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) and was a 2010-2013 American Psychiatric Association Public Psychiatry Fellow where he served on the APA Board of Trustees, was a 2012 American College of Psychiatrists Laughlin Fellow, and is a 2015-2017 Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry Fellow.

Dr. Hurley is interested in addiction medicine, health services research and implementation science, and health policy research. As a Clinical Scholar, Dr. Hurley would like to study the characteristics of successful models of care focused on preventing and treating substance use associated illness, and determine the extent to which these can be cost-effectively integrated within the evolving payment environment.

   
 

Roya Ijadi-Maghsoodi, M.D.

Dr. Roya Ijadi-Maghsoodi completed her general adult psychiatry residency and child psychiatry fellowship, where she also served as co-chief fellow, at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Ijadi-Maghsoodi earned her undergraduate degree in biology from Iowa State University. She received her medical training from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine where she was involved with the free mental health clinic in Iowa City and with a local transitional housing shelter. During her child psychiatry training she was involved with several research projects with the Los Angeles Unified School District. She evaluated mental health integration at LAUSD Wellness Centers, unique school-based health centers serving high-risk students and families in Los Angeles, and conducted a qualitative study examining student understanding of mental health and barriers/facilitators to obtaining care. Throughout her training she has been active in child mental health advocacy and serves on the Government Affairs Committee of the California Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and as treasurer to the Southern California Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Dr. Ijadi-Maghsoodi is currently in the second year of the Advanced Fellowship in Women’s Health within the VA Greater Los Angeles Health Services Research and Development Center. Her research interests focus on vulnerable populations and trauma. She has specific interests in homeless youth and families, and commercially sexually exploited youth, for whom homelessness is often a risk factor. As a Women’s Health Fellow, she wishes to understand the needs of homeless Veteran families to inform housing and social services within the VA homeless programs. She ultimately aims to improve outcomes for these vulnerable populations utilizing a trauma-informed approach.

   

Ippolytos Kalofonos, M.D., Ph.D.

Ippolytos Kalofonos completed residency in Psychiatry at the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Kalofonos earned his undergraduate degree in anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. He received his medical training from the University of California, San Francisco, while also obtaining a PhD in Medical Anthropology at the University of California, San Francisco and a Master’s degree in Health Sciences and Epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently psychiatry resident and an American Psychiatric Association Minority Leadership Fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle. He conducted ethnographic research in Mozambique looking at community experiences with the HIV/AIDS treatment scale-up from 2003 to 2010. In addition, he has worked in Salvador, Brazil studying urban leptospirosis epidemics, in Nicaragua working on a post-hurricane needs assessment, and on the US-Mexico border looking at access to prenatal care. Dr. Kalofonos' current research interests include community mental health, recovery and peer-support interventions, and global mental health. He is interested in developing collaborative, person-centered approaches to severe mental illness and at ways of decreasing medication burden and improving life expectancy for people diagnosed with severe mental illness. Dr. Kalofonos looks forward to a career balancing clinical practice and research at the interface of psychiatry, health services, and cultural and medical anthropology, focused on patient-centered mental health interventions and improving care of marginalized populations.

   
Christine

Christine Lam, M.D.

Dr. Christine Lam completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the joint program at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Lam earned her undergraduate degree in Human Biology, Health and Society from Cornell University, and received her dual M.D. and M.B.A. from Tufts University School of Medicine.  During her medical training she has completed several health care management projects, most notably developing a business proposal for implementing an evidenced-based model of collaborative depression care at the Tufts Medical Center’s outpatient internal medicine offices; and developing policy recommendations for the appropriate utilization of total joint replacements at Tufts Health Plan, a not-for-profit HMO. During residency she worked with Dr. David Ganz on a case study of Kaiser Permanente’s implementation of performance improvement capabilities, and was active in Cedars-Sinai's Patient Safety Committee, Morbidity and Mortality Committee, and elected by her peers to serve on the Graduate Medical Education Committee. 

As a National V.A. Quality Scholar, she has expanded her breath of understanding of health care organizations and quality through the development of health services research skills in the areas of integrated care and depression, quality metric development and evaluation of depression care, particularly for vulnerable populations.  She desires to marry her clinical, research and management interests to help patients, providers, researchers and policymakers make data-driven decisions to create evidence-based health care systems for patients on a population level.

   

Lucinda Leung, M.D.

Lucinda Leung completed residency in Internal Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Leung earned her undergraduate degree in Psychology and Chinese Language and Literature at Dartmouth College. She received her medical training at Brown Medical School and Dartmouth Medical School. She also obtained a Masters of Public Health Degree in family and community health at Harvard School of Public Health. During her medical training, she was a researcher for Partners in Health: Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change, collaborating in a psychosocial intervention for HIV-affected families in central Haiti. She created and implemented a pilot quality improvement project to improve medication adherence in uninsured hypertensive patients at RI Free Clinic. Also, she served at the Brown Community Clinic where she founded Brown Medical School's inaugural student-run clinic and authored medical student curriculum on care of underserved populations. Dr. Leung's research interests include mental health, health disparities, and medical education. As a clinical scholar, Dr. Leung wishes to achieve county-level impact on primary care delivery to underserved populations in both academic and public health settings, and gain the skills to transform primary care in many vulnerable and underserved communities.

   
 

Pushpa Raja, M.D.

Pushpa Raja completed her undergraduate studies at Duke University, medical school at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, psychiatry residency at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, Masters of Health Policy and Management at the UCLA School of Public Health, and is currently a VA Quality Scholar and UCLA Associate Project Scientist.  Her interests are in improving quality of care for patients with complex psychosocial and medical needs, using telemedicine to improve quality and access to care, and trainee education on quality improvement.  During residency, she developed and implemented a novel reporting system using several submission formats (text messaging, e-mail, Web form, mobile application) that allowed residents to report various types of operational waste in real time.  She also co-founded and co-chaired a health system-wide UCLA Housestaff Quality Improvement Council for collaboration and education between trainees in all specialties.  As a fourth year resident, she was presented the American Psychiatric Association Resident Recognition Award, given annually to one psychiatric resident or fellow from each institution who exemplifies APA values. 

Currently, she is part of a team evaluating a multi-site, intensive outpatient VA program for veterans with complex care needs at high risk for emergency visits and hospital use, and is partnering with the UCLA health system to formatively evaluate telehealth pilot programs.  She also sits on the UCLA Department of Psychiatry’s Quality Council to help steward and advise quality initiatives across disciplines, from nursing to social work to resident to faculty initiatives, and teaches the new resident curriculum on quality improvement. 

   
 
Lello Tesema, M.D.

Lello Tesema, M.D.

Dr. Lello Tesema completed her internal medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance.  She obtained her undergraduate degree with a major in Economics and minor in Religious Studies from Cornell University.  She earned her medical degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She served as a delegate to the Committee for Interns and Residents Union and was actively involved in an appeal to raise the hourly wage of the hospital security staff. Dr. Tesema also chaired a mentorship program between Mount Sinai medical students and high school juniors at Manhattan Science and Math high School in East Harlem who are interested in medical professions.

Dr. Tesema is interested in the substance abuse, social determinants of health, and health disparities.  She has worked on two projects to gain a better understanding of barriers to treatment for opioid addiction: 1) an audit access to buprenorphine treatment in the state of Massachusetts 2) an evaluation of how opioid addiction and treatment is taught in residency programs in the United States.  She presented her findings at the national American Public Health Association meeting in 2013 and regional and national 2014 SGIM national meeting.  As a Clinical Scholar, she is interested in pursuing a project to explore the effectiveness of screening for opioid disorders, brief interventions and referral to treatment in safety net settings in at risk communities.  She is particularly interested in developing more effective interventions for former inmates with opioid addiction

   

Kenneth B. Wells, M.D., M.P.H. (CSP, Co-Director)

Dr. Kenneth Wells is a Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, a Professor of Health Services in the UCLA School of Public Health, and Affiliated Adjunct at RAND. His joint appointment across UCLA and RAND is supported by a UCLA-RAND Memorandum of Understanding that promotes research across these institutions. He is the Director of the Center for Health Services and Society at the UCLA Semel Institute and is Co-Director of the UCLA Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, which supports health services research training for physicians in all clinical specialties. Dr. Wells received the American Psychiatric Association’s 2006 Research Prize for lifetime achievement in research and previously received the Senior Investigator Award of Academy Health. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and for four years chaired its Neuroscience and Behavioral Health Board. He has been Chair of the Community Health Improvement Collaborative (CHIC), a coalition of community and academic partners from four NIH-funded Centers in Los Angeles, that are seeking to improve infrastructure and methods for community-academic partnered participatory research in health. He is currently PI of the Center for Research on Quality in Managed Care, the Partnered Research Center for Quality Care (PRCQC) and Community Partners in Care (CPIC) R01.

 

 

   
 

 

   
 

 

   
 


   
 

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