Mental Health Informatics and Data Science (MINDS) Hub

Dr. Zima CV

Dr. Bonnie T. Zima, MD, MPH

Founding Director
Professor-in-Residence, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior

Bonnie T. Zima, MD, MPH, is a child psychiatrist and health services researcher whose work focuses on improving the quality of mental health care for children, adolescents, and young adults. Her research integrates mental health services research, quality measurement, clinical informatics, and advanced analytic methods using electronic health records, administrative data, and national population data. Her current work applies a developmental approach to improve the precision of identifying actionable targets for better mental health care.

Dr. Choi CV

Kristen Choi, PhD, PMHNP-BC, FAAN

Associate Director
Associate Professor
Audrienne H. Moseley Chair in Nursing
UCLA School of Nursing

Kristen R. Choi, PhD, PMHNP-BC, FAAN, is a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and health services researcher. Her research focuses on improving access to and delivery of mental health care for children, adolescents, and other populations with complex health and social needs. Her work spans mental health services and policy, trauma and adverse childhood experiences, developmental disabilities, and the mental health workforce. Within MINDS, she brings clinical, health services, and policy perspectives to understanding and improving mental health care across development.

Dr. Ettner CV

Susan L. Ettner, PhD

Susan L. Ettner, PhD, is an economist and health services researcher whose work examines how health policy, insurance, and health care delivery influence access to treatment, service use, costs, and outcomes. Her research has a longstanding emphasis on behavioral health and the effects of insurance and benefit design on treatment for mental health and substance use disorders. Within MINDS, Dr. Ettner contributes content knowledge in health policy and expertise in economic theory, study design, econometric methods, and the analysis of large administrative databases.

Dr. Klomhaus CV

Alexandra Klomhaus, PhD

Alexandra Klomhaus, PhD, is a biostatistician whose research focuses on methods for analyzing complex longitudinal electronic health record and other real-world
health data. Her work addresses challenges common to observational health data, including irregular visit timing, sparse outcomes, and treatment-dependent
patterns of observation. Within MINDS, Dr. Klomhaus contributes biostatistical and data science expertise to developing and applying rigorous methods for
studying mental health care using EHR and other large-scale health data.

Dr. Wisk CV

Lauren E. Wisk, PhD

Associate Professor-in-Residence Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, UCLA Department of Medicine

Lauren E. Wisk, PhD, is a health services researcher and methodologist whose work focuses on health and health care use among children, adolescents, young adults, and their families. Her research applies life-course and biopsychosocial frameworks to understand health across development, particularly for young people with chronic, mental, behavioral, and developmental conditions. Her current work examines health care transitions and outcomes for adolescents and young adults. Within MINDS, Dr. Wisk contributes expertise in developmental health services research, population data, longitudinal methods, and transitions in care.

Dr. Zhuang CV

Chu (Judy) Zhuang, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar
Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Chu (Judy) Zhuang, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar whose research interests include understanding the policy (i.e., state and school-level) determinants of mental health among US adolescents. Within the MINDS Hub, she is working with an interdisciplinary team using national population-level data to study mental health treatment among adolescents and young adults, including patterns of psychotropic medication use and behavioral health services. Her broader research interests include bridging large-scale evidence-based evaluation with on-site practices. They include ongoing developing proposal to examine an existing school-based mental health intervention across LA schools and related social media policies affecting the lives of adolescents and young adults during their lifecourse. In addition, Chu has broad interest in developing advanced algorithm using different survey instruments, including nationally represented surveys and electronic health records.

Audrey Nguyen, MD, MPH

Psychiatry Resident
UCLA Psychiatry Residency Program
MINDS Research Elective

Audrey Nguyen, MD, MPH, is a psychiatry resident at UCLA completing a research elective with the MINDS Hub. She attended UCLA School of Medicine on a full merit scholarship and completed her MPH in Health Management, with a concentration in Public Health Leadership, at Harvard School of Public Health. Her research interests include digital mental health, healthcare quality/safety, and child/adolescent psychiatry. Through her MINDS research elective, she is conducting a literature review to examine digital health interventions for youth ADHD pharmacological management.

David Kim CV

David Kim

Medical Student

David Kim is a medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA with an MPH in Epidemiology. His research interests include psychiatric pharmacoepidemiology, mental health services research, and disparities in access to and quality of mental health care, particularly among youth and underserved populations. Through his research and pursuit of psychiatry, he hopes to identify and reduce ethnic and socioeconomic barriers to care and support holistic, patient-centered mental health care. Within the MINDS Hub, he has led the classification of psychotropic medications by FDA approval status according to age, clinical indication, and date of approval. This work will be applied to two decades of Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data to examine psychotropic medication use among U.S. children, adolescents, and young adults.

Elyse Tascione, M.A.

Research Associate | MINDS Hub Administrator

Elyse Tascione, M.A., is a Research Associate and Administrator for the UCLA MINDS Hub. She contributes to clinical informatics research using electronic health record data to improve the identification and measurement of mental health care for children and adolescents. Her collaborative research includes studies using clinical documentation and advanced analytic methods to identify suicide-related emergency visits and interventions. She also supports Hub’s research operations, project coordination, interdisciplinary collaborations, and administrative activities.

Joshua Lee CV

Joshua Lee, M.S.

Data Programmer, Computer Scientist

Joshua Lee, M.S., is a data programmer with the UCLA MINDS Hub who leads data programming and analytic implementation for multisite research using the University of California Health Data Warehouse.  He develops reproducible electronic record phenotyping algorithms using the OMOP Common Data Model, constructs medication treatment episodes, and operationalizes clinical and health care measures across UC health systems. His work supports rigorous cohort construction, quality measurement, and statistical analyses of mental health care for children, adolescents and young adults.