National Institute of Mental Health
Mental Health Economics Training Program
Program Description
Through National Research Service Awards (NRSA), funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health offers advanced multidisciplinary training in mental health economics and the pharmacoeconomics of mental health.
Trainees will have the opportunity to work with Berkeley faculty from the School of Public Health, the Department of Economics, and the Goldman School of Public Policy, and with the School of Pharmacy at UC San Francisco.
The program provides stipends and support for travel, as well as health insurance for the postdoctoral trainees. Awards allow selected trainees to gain 1 or more years of training and experience in applying research methods to the economic evaluation of mental health financing, services, and policies, with an opportunity for special attention to pharmacoeconomics.
Trainee Eligibility Requirements
Postdoctoral fellowships are open to those with training in health economics and a PhD from a school of Public Health, Public Policy, or a closely related field, or those with a PhD in Economics and demonstrated interest and competence in health economics. Strong quantitative skills are necessary.
Trainees are required to pursue their research training on a full-time basis, devoting at least 40 hours per week to the program.
Citizenship
To be appointed to a training position supported by a NRSA research training grant, an individual must be a citizen or non-citizen national of the United States or must have been lawfully admitted for permanent residence, i.e., possess a currently valid Alien Registration Receipt Card I-551. Non-citizen national are generally persons born in outlying possessions of the United States (e.g., American Samoa). Individuals \ on temporary or student visas are not eligible.
Program Application
Individuals interested in applying to the Mental Health Economics Training Program can apply directly with the University of California, Berkeley office using the application below:
Director
Richard Scheffler, PhD
Richard Scheffler has been the Director of the Nicholas C. Petris Center since its inception in 1999. He is a Distinguished Professor of Health Economics and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds the Chair in Health Care Markets & Consumer Welfare endowed by the State of California Office of the Attorney General. His research is on health care markets, health insurance, the health workforce, mental health economics, social capital and health, pharmacoeconomics, and international health systems. Professor Scheffler is a recipient of the American Public Health Association's Carl Taube Award, which honors distinguished contributions to the field of mental health services research. He was a Rockefeller and a Fulbright Scholar, and served as President of the International Health Economists Association 4th Congress. He has been a Scholar in Residence at the Institute of Medicine and the World Bank. He also served as an advisor to the World Health Organization in the area of human resources. He has published more than 150 papers and edited and written six books. His newest book will be published by Stanford University Press in September 2008—Is There a Doctor in the House: Market Signals and Tomorrow’s Supply of Doctors.
Advisory Committee
Robert M. Anderson, PhD
Department of Economics
University of California, Berkeley
Ralph A. Catalano, PhD
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
Teh-Wei Hu, PhD
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
Kathryn A. Phillips, PhD
School of Pharmacy
University of California, San Francisco
Program Staff
James F. Ross, MBA
Associate Director of Finance and Administration
Jim manages the financial and business operations of the Petris Center, which includes budget administration, fund management, project management, liaison with funding agencies, vendor relations, and general operations. He worked in finance, budgeting, and information systems at UC Berkeley and the University of Massachusetts, and was a consultant in these areas to private secondary education and health care organizations. Jim also brings a private industry perspective to the Petris Center, having led finance and information technology teams in the large corporate environments of Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Leasing, Itel Corporation, American President Lines, and Levi Strauss, and in the small-firm, high-tech world - two software companies and a systems integration firm. He has a BA from Indiana University and an MBA from Saint Mary's College of California.
Trainees
Christine Brown-Mahoney, PhD
Chris Brown Mahoney received her PhD in 1991 from the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management. She also holds an AA in nursing, a BS in animal science and genetics, and an MS in quantitative genetics and statistics. Chris’ PhD examined the labor supply of registered nurses. She has designed, analyzed, and reported on data in clinical trials, on patients’ surgical outcomes, technology changes and costs, healthcare workers labor supply, and meta-analyses. Chris has published over 40 of these in peer refereed journals and presented at over 100 conferences internationally. Chris has consulted extensively with medical device companies, government agencies, and hospitals and clinics. Chris taught statistics to graduate students for 15 years at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.
Cheryl Cashin, PhD
Cheryl Cashin received her BA in Chemistry from Bucknell University, her Master's in Agriculture from Cornell and her PhD in Economics from the University of Washington. She is a specialist in health financing policy research, design, and implementation. As Director of a health reform program funded by the US Agency for International Development, she advised the government of the Republic of Georgia on national health care financing policy design and implementation. She also managed integrated health policy programs in the Republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, providing technical assistance to national health financing policy development and implementation, including national health insurance, and designing and implementing health financing, service delivery, and\ provider payment systems. She has led the design, implementation, and analysis of household and health facility surveys to support health policy development and monitoring and evaluation in Central Asia, and participated on research teams for a series of studies of the cost-effectiveness of health and nutrition interventions in Latin America.
Patrick Richard, PhD, MA
Patrick obtained his doctoral from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2007. There, he worked on children’s utilization of mental health services, children’s emotional and behavioral problems and their parents’ labor market outcomes and analyzed the differential effects of psychological distress (PD) on employment by race. He also investigated disparities in the quality of hospital care provided to minorities and low income patients. Patrick is currently conducting research in the following three areas: 1) the effects of children’s mental disorders on their parents’ earnings 2) the effects of changes in patient-physician racially concordant workforce on the quality of care received by minority patients with diabetes 3) the interaction of social capital and education to moderate the impact of life-course financial strain on individuals’ mental health outcomes of different racial/ethnic groups. Patrick was a Johnson & Johnson Program Evaluation Scholar from 2005-2007 at Johns Hopkins University. Additionally, he has more than 10 years of professional experience in Corporate Finance and State Government Policy.
Jangho Yoon, PhD, MSPH
Jangho received his MSPH and PhD degrees in health policy and economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His primary research interests are health economics, the evaluation of mental health policies and laws, financing and delivery of health care for vulnerable populations, social capital, and applications of advanced econometric techniques to mental health services research. His current research topics include (1) relationships between the supply of mental health care, mental health outcomes, substance abuse, and criminal justice outcomes, (2) intra- and inter-system impacts of mental health financing including an examination of the relationship between managed behavioral health care, up-coding, and cost-shifting to the criminal justice system, (3) inter-relationship between physical and mental health, (4) social capital and health outcomes such as healthy lifestyles, obesity and mental health, and (5) the evaluation of the California Mental Health Service Act.