2010

Linda Marc's article titled HIV among Haitian-born persons in the United States, 1985-2007 in the journal AIDS reports new findings on AIDS cases among Haitian-born individuals living in the US. Dr. Marc's findings have been picked up widely in the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and other US and Caribbean news sources, as they challenge previous assumptions about higher prevalance compared to other populations.

Advisory Board Meeting of the Advanced Latino Disparities Center

The Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research recently hosted the third and final Advisory Board meeting of the Advanced Latino Disparities Center on April 15th & 16th, 2010. The Advanced Latino Disparities Center, funded in 2005 through the National Institute of Mental Health, focuses on understanding numerous factors affecting mental health service disparities among Latino and other multicultural populations and generating research knowledge to eliminate them. Advanced Center investigators were grateful for the important contributions of the Advisory Board members in attendance, including Ms. Majose Carrasco (NAMI), Drs. Junius Gonzales (University of South Florida), Kim Hopper (Columbia), Ken Wells (UCLA) and Samuel Zuvekas (AHRQ). The goals of the meeting were twofold: to garner feedback on the work and accomplishments of the Advanced Center and to solicit input about the direction of CMMHR and several proposed initiatives of Center investigators. The Advisory Board was universally positive in their response to the academic contributions and accomplishments of the Advanced Center and provided timely and meaningful feedback on how CMMHR can best continue its mission of promoting and generating research to improve the mental health of ethnic and racial minority populations.

Dr. Benjamin Cook's latest article titled Comparing Methods of Racial and Ethnic Disparities Measurement across Different Settings of Mental Health Care is now published in the Early View online section of Health Services Research. You can also read about the article on the Kaiser Family Foundation's April Update on Health Disparities

RQP Site Investigator Meeting

On March 29, 2010 the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research hosted a meeting for the Right Question Project Mental Health (RQP-MH). This project is part of the University of Puerto Rico-Cambridge Health Alliance Research Center of Excellence, funded through the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The meeting brought together researchers from the seven RQP-MH participating sites from around the country, for an all day event. The site investigators present included Drs. Alex Interian (New Jersey), Michele Allen (Minnesota), Mary Fierro (Massachusetts), Roberto Lewis-Fernandez (New York), Gabriela Livas-Stein (North Carolina), Catherine Lee (North Carolina), Martin La Roche (Massachusetts), and Catherine Schuman (Massachusetts). The objective of the meeting was to assess the project's current status and discuss ways to continually improve this multi-site intervention. Key topics included participant recruitment, retention, and research protocol implementation. The meeting afforded site researchers an avenue to voice concerns, relate new ideas, and discuss site-specific performance. At the meetings conclusion, researchers took home detailed accounts of their respective sites' progress, learned new ways to deal with recruitment/retention, developed site specific goals, began to strategize for analysis of the data that has been collected, and continued to build on our knowledge base for implementing major multi-site projects. The meeting was a success and we are planning another RQP Site Investigator meeting for Fall 2010.

Disparities Measurement Conference

February 25 & 26, 2010

Nearly 60 people from around the Harvard community came together on February 25 to discuss methodological and conceptual issues in the measurement of healthcare disparities

The Harvard Catalyst Health Disparities Research Program hosted a transdisciplinary disparities measurement symposium, co-sponsored by the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research, Cambridge Health Alliance on February 25, 2010. The event provided an opportunity for dialogue about disparities research from multiple perspectives including sociology, health services research, economics, statistics, and public health.

The meeting discussed ways to improve the measurement of healthcare disparities, identified debates and synergies across disciplines to incorporate in future disparities research, and disseminated state-of-the-art methods and concepts of disparities measurement to the Harvard Catalyst community. The symposium’s speakers addressed topics related to concepts and definitions of healthcare disparities; innovations in the measurement of disparities from clinical, social science, and community perspectives; innovations from the fields of statistics and economics; and comparison of methods used to implement the Institute of Medicine definition of healthcare disparities. Below are links to the conference Powerpoint presentations:

• Margarita Alegría, Professor of Psychiatry, CHA;
  
• John Ayanian, Professor of Medicine and Health Care Policy, HMS;
  
• Jason Beckfield, Assistant Professor of Sociology, HU;
  
• Benjamin Cook, Instructor in Psychiatry, CHA;
  
• Alexander Green, Assistant Professor of Medicine, MGH;
  
• Jennifer Haas, Associate Professor of Medicine, BWH;
  
• LeRoi Hicks, Assistant Professor of Medicine, BWH;
  
• Willard Manning, Professor of Public Policy, U. Chicago;
  
• Thomas McGuire, Professor of Health Care Economics, HMS;
  
• Xiao-Li Meng, Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics, HU;
  
• David Williams, Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health; and
  
• Alan Zaslavsky, Professor of Health Care Policy, HMS

In all, the event brought together nearly 60 attendees from the Harvard Catalyst community, Boston Medical Center, Brandeis University, Dartmouth College, Fenway Community Health, Northeastern University, Tufts University, and the University of Chicago.

Dr. Linda Marc received a New Investigator Award in January 2010 from the Center for Public Health Preparedness at Harvard School of Public Health. The project is entitled "Communication Behaviors Amongst Persons of Haitian Ancestry and Public Health Preparedness." Read the description and aims of planned research efforts.

Dr. Carson was recently interviewed for an article on Psychiatric News about how clinicians should be more assertive when soliciting a patient's medical history.

Read Dr. Carson's thoughts about online social networks and their use in therapy on Clinical Psychiatry News

Listen to Dr. Alegria discuss facts concerning Depression Among Latinos in the National Alliance for Mental Health's first Down and Up Show' recorded in Spanish.

Read Dr. Nick Carson's newest publication, examining how mental health clinicians assess and respond to physical illness in intake evaluations.

CMMHR was awarded a 2-year NIH Challenge grant for the project titled "Reducing Ethnic and Racial Bias in Screening for Psychiatric Disorders in Adolescents". Read the description and aims of planned research efforts.

Listen to Dr. Alegria's podcast on El Blog, addressing the 'Latino health issue no one is talking about'

2009

Dr. Linda Marc, vice-chair of the Race & Ethnicity Advisory Committee of the U.S. Census Bureau, is quoted in Census Advisory Board Member Urges Caribbean Nationals To Learn From Hispanics

Dr. Alegria receives the Simon Bolivar award. Read the local coverage.

Dr. Benjamin Cook's latest article titled Pathways and Correlates Connecting Latinos’ Mental Health With Exposure to the United States is now published in the Early View online section of The American Journal of Public Health.

Dr. Benjamin Cook's latest article on Measuring Racial/Ethnic Disparities is now published in the Early View online section of Health Services Research. The article is published in the October 2009 edition of the journal.

New NLAAS II Publications

Several new NLAAS publications look at important issues of mental health of U.S. Latinos:

Dr. H. Gonzalez and co-authors look at Antidepressant Use in Community-Dwelling U.S. Latinos with and without Depressive and Anxiety Disorders in Depression and Anxiety

Dr. W. Vega and co-authors examine Prevalence and Correlates Of Dual Diagnosis in Drug Abuse and Dependence

Dr. L. Suarez and co-authors address Prevalence, Course and Correlates of Child-Onset Anxiety Disorders in Psicologia Conductal

Other New Publications:

Read the first paper released using data from the Center's Patient-Provider Encounter Study (PPES). Dr. Alegria and co-authors report on How Missing Information in Diagnosis Can Lead to Disparities in the Clinical Encounter.

The CMMHR and our investigators were featured in the latest version of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) newsletter titled 'Avanzamos'. This edition features exclusive articles written by researchers from the Center who share the results of their latest findings. This is the first fully bilingual issue of Avanzamos. Take a look at the articles below in English and Spanish from our investigators in the full version of the newsletter that you can download here.

Benjamin Cook, Ph.D., M.P.H. - 'The Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research'/'El centro de investigación de salud mental multicultural'

Daniel Jimenez, Ph.D. - 'My Story'/'Mi historia'

Margarita Alegria, Ph.D. - 'What Can We Learn from Research to Achieve Wellness and Avoid Disparities in Mental Health and Substance Use Services?'/'¿Qué podemos aprender de la investigación para lograr el bienestar y evitar desigualdades en servicios de salud mental y uso de sustancias?'

Nicholas Carson, M.D., F.R.C.P.C - 'Children's Mental Health'/'Salud mental infantil'

Norah Mulvaney-Day, Ph.D. - 'Health Care Reform in Massachusetts: How is it Affecting Individuals with Mental Health Disorders?'/'Reforma de salud en Massachusetts: ¿Cómo está afectando a individuos con trastornos de salud mental?'

If you are interested in signing up for the newsletter please visit NAMI's website at www.nami.org/avanzamos.

Dr. Benjamin Cook's latest article on Health Care Disparities published in the February 2009 edition of Medical Care Research and Review

2007

Dr. Alegria and Colleagues Offer First Comprehensive Study of Eating Disorders Among Latinos

Dr. Alegria will be giving a talk at the Institute for Health at Rutgers on January 18, entitled "Acculturation and Its Many Myths".

2006

Dr. Alegria is the recipient of the 2006 Greenwood Award for Research Excellence, awarded by the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Program Directors Association.

Dr. Alegria will be working with governor-elect Deval Patrick as part of his health care advisory committee.

Dr. Antonio Polo recently published an article on school-research collaborations. See our publications page for more information.

At the 134th Annual American Public Health Association Meeting several of the Center´s investigators will present new work related to translating interventions into mental health practice. "Moving a Consumer Empowerment Intervention into Practice" will be presented on Tuesday November 7, 2006 in Boston, MA (2:30-4:00 PM).

In July, Drs. Alegria, Mulvaney-Day, and Polo, along with community partners, attended the "Community Engagement and Partnership: New Directions in Mental Health Services Research Conference".

Dr. Margarita Alegria delivered the keynote speech at the Worcester County Conference on Cultural Competency on May 31, 2006. The presentation is available here.

Dr. Pinka Chatterji and Dr. Zhun Cao will present papers at the inaugural conference of the American Society of Health Economists, to be held June 4-7, 2006.