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Youth (in)Justice and Techquity

MARCH 3, 2023

Marina Tolou-Shams, Ph.D.
Professor and Vice Chair for Community Engagement, Outreach and Advocacy
UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences | Weill Institute for Neurosciences
Deputy Vice Chair for Research, ZSFG Department of Psychiatry
Director, UCSF Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health

Evan D. Holloway, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
NIDA T32 Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Services Research
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
Juvenile Justice & Behavioral Health Lab (http://jjbh.org/)

About the Presentation: In this talk, we will discuss ways to leverage technology to increase access to behavioral health care for systems-impacted youth and families. We will present on what to consider when developing and empirically testing such technology-based interventions at the individual, family and structural levels.

About the Presenters:

Dr. Marina Tolou-Shams is the Kilroy Realty Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair for Community Engagement, Outreach and Advocacy in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is also the Deputy Vice Chair of Research in Psychiatry at Zuckerberg SF General Hospital. Trained as a pediatric and forensic psychologist, she has many years of providing direct clinical care in the community. Her clinical-community direct care experiences inform partnerships and collaborations with youth, families and systems to intentionally co-design and implement research studies. She leads the UCSF Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health (JJBH) lab whose mission is to improve behavioral health outcomes for youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice, child welfare, and foster care systems (https://jjbh.org/). With over 100 peer reviewed publications, her JJBH NIH-funded studies aim to improve youths’ physical, mental, and emotional health, reduce drug and alcohol use, reduce HIV/STI risk behaviors and prevent system re-entry. Studies take an ecodevelopmental approach to identifying multiple ways to improve access to and engagement in behavioral health care for these youth, thereby addressing individual and structural health inequities. Studies also include specific emphasis on gender and trauma-responsive interventions for girls in the juvenile justice system as well as researching ways to leverage technology to improve access to behavioral health care for justice-impacted and foster care youth and families. Dr. Tolou-Shams also has a strong commitment to mentoring and is a NIDA K24 career development awardee with emphasis on training junior scholars in research focused on systems-impacted youth and substance use.

Dr. Evan Holloway is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science’s T32 traineeship in Substance Use Disorders Treatment and Services Research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a member of the Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health lab. He is trained as a pediatric and forensic clinical psychologist and has conducted both clinical work and research. Since 2009, he has conducted applied research on the juvenile legal system in four states across the U.S. He has 20 peer reviewed publications examining behavioral health for youth involved in the legal and foster systems, juvenile probation, trauma, risk/needs assessment, technology, and service delivery systems. At UCSF, Evan’s research has continued to focus on system-involved youth, including using technology and implementation science to improve service access; peer deviancy, substance use consequences, and co-occurring mental health problems as predictors of recidivism; individual characteristics associated with perpetration of stalking, bullying, and romantic partner violence; and co-occurring trajectories of substance use and interpersonal aggression perpetration. He is currently conducting research on ways to use technology to improve access to behavioral health care, and developing research to using Ecological Momentary Assessment/Intervention to study and prevent violence and substance use for system-involved youth.