• Lawrence Palinkas is Professor in the schools of Anthropology and Social Work and is a medical anthropologist at the University of Southern California with expertise in qualitative methods. Dr. Palinkas’ expertise includes use of qualitative methods in the study of health services, implementation of evidence-based practice, need for mental health services, immigrant/refugee health, and group dynamics under extreme conditions. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation has been a committee member of the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine.

• Donald Slymen is Professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Public Health at San Diego State University with extensive expertise in epidemiology, multi-level and mixed-effect models, and clinical trial design and analysis. He has been a co-investigator on a number of NIH and other collaborative research studies with faculty at San Diego State University and CASRC including studies of implementation of evidence-based practice, mental health services for youths in the child-welfare system, behavioral interventions to reduce or prevent smoking, alter nutritional habits, improve exercise, and other preventive and health services studies.

The Methods & Statistics Group is coordinated by Gregory Aarons and Michael Hurlburt, Research Scientists at CASRC. Senior members of the Methods and Statistics Group include:

C. Hendricks Brown is Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the College of Public Health, University of South Florida. He also holds adjunct professor positions in the Department of Biostatistics and the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is a Senior Research Scholar at the American Institutes for Research. Dr. Brown directs the Prevention Science Methodology Group - a consortium of nationally prominent methodologists as part of his NIH funded grant “Methodology for MH/Drug Prevention & Early Intervention.”

Laura Dunn is Assistant Professor in Residence in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Dunn’s work examines ethics issues in mental health research including informed consent in patients with schizophrenia and other major mental illnesses, improving the process of informed consent to optimize research participants’ abilities to provide valid consent for research, decision-making capacity in patients with mental illness, and research ethics. She and colleague Barton Palmer have developed video-based training for informed consent for children and adolescents and their families.

Celia B. Fisher is Marie Ward Doty Professor of Psychology and Director of the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education, is a member of the DHHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), Co-Chair of the SACHRP Subcommittee on Research Involving Children. She chaired the American Psychological Association’s (APA ) Ethics Code Task Force, the Ethics Committee of the Society for Research in Child Development, and the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Clinical Research Involving Children.
Robert Gibbons is Professor of Biostatistics and Director of the Center for Health Statistics at University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Gibbons is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and is internationally known for developing innovative statistical approaches to mental health and health services data. Dr. Gibbons current NIH supported work includes 4 grants: “Mixed-Effects ZIP Models-Mental Health Service Research,” “Antidepressant Treatment and Suicidality: Biostatistical / Methodological Solutions,” “Mental Health Computerized Adaptive Testing,” and “Computerized Adaptive Testing - Depression Inventory.”

Barton Palmer is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego and the San Diego Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Dr. Palmer’s work examines neuropsychological aspects of schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions and the impact of cognitive deficits on patients' everyday functioning and their capacity to consent to treatment and research participation. Drs. Palmer and Dunn have developed video-based training for informed consent for children and adolescents and their families. Dr. Palmer’s current NIH supported grants on ethics include R01MH064722 “Capacity to Consent to Research on Psychosis” and R01AG028827 “Enhancing Consent for Alzheimer Research.”

Scott Roesch is Associate Professor and a quantitative psychologist and statistician in the Department of Psychology at San Diego State University. His areas of expertise include latent variable modeling, meta-analysis, mixed-effects models, and general growth mixture modeling. His substantive interests include trait-state models of stress and coping; coping with physical illness, and particularly cancer; cultural, ethnic, and acculturation differences in stress and coping; cross-ethnic measurement equivalence.

Methods and Statistics Clinic: Consultation from Drs. Palinkas, Slymen, and Roesch is available year-round to CASRC investigators and post-doctoral fellows at the twice monthly Methods and Statistics Clinic. The clinic is held on-site at the CASRC offices. Other senior members are available for consultation on an as-needed basis. CASRC investigators regularly participate in Dr. Hendricks Brown’s weekly NIH supported Prevention Science Methodology Group teleconference meetings.

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