Bibhav Acharya
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Mental illness is tangled up with other major health burdens. It can be both a cause and a consequence of stigma, violence and chronic disease.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
- Topics
global mental health
Nepal
people living with HIV
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Mar 2029
What they work on
- Co-design INCLUDE, a digital tool combining clinic-visit stigma assessment, a health-worker dashboard and a library of stigma-reduction activities, with people living with HIV and health workers, then pre-pilot it at one clinic in Nepal.
- Assess the acceptability and feasibility of the INCLUDE intersectional stigma tool among clients, health workers and center leads at four antiretroviral therapy (ART) centers in Nepal.
- Test in a 12-month randomized controlled trial of 300 triads whether MILAP, mother-in-law engagement plus behavioral couples therapy, reduces depression and intimate partner violence among young women in Nepal.
- Identify the pathways through which MILAP improves young women's mental health, and conduct a costing analysis of the family intervention.
- Assess whether BECOME, behavioral therapies delivered by community health workers, improves depression, anxiety, diabetes and hypertension, using a stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial of 600 participants in 20 clusters in Nepal.
- Evaluate BECOME's implementation with the RE-AIM framework at patient, provider and health-system levels, and conduct a costing analysis to support long-term scale-up.
More about the research
Effective care is often missing in low-resource settings. Working in Nepal with long-standing local partners, these projects test practical, community- and family-based interventions. One targets HIV stigma, one targets depression linked to intimate partner violence, and one targets depression and anxiety alongside diabetes and hypertension. Each is designed to work in real health systems.
Why it matters
These studies could give the governments of Nepal and other low-resource regions practical, affordable ways to treat depression and anxiety together with diabetes and hypertension. They could also help young women facing intimate partner violence who cannot easily leave abusive marriages. A transportable stigma tool could improve care engagement for people living with HIV in Nepal and the United States.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
A randomized controlled trial of a Multi-component family Intervention to Lower depression and Address intimate Partner violence (MILAP) among young women in Nepal
NIH · Jun 2024 – Mar 2029
A type II hybrid implementation-effectiveness study of BECOME (BEhavioral Community-based COmbined Intervention for MEntal Health and Noncommunicable Diseases) delivered by community health workers
NIH · Jul 2023 – Apr 2028
Developing and testing a digital health tool for INterseCtional stigma assessment and reduction at multiple Levels and mUltiple DimEnsions (INCLUDE) to improve HIV care in ART centers in Nepal
NIH · Aug 2024 – Jul 2027
Closest labs
Dan Tran
Temple University, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Refine the INTEGRATE-RX pharmacist-led HIV and cardiovascular care program using human-centered design, and assess its acceptability among patients, pharmacists, physicians, peers and administrators.
Susan Sherman
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology
Adapt Mobile SPARC outreach services for women who use drugs by identifying factors that help or hinder service use, through in-depth interviews with 40 women and 5 staff members.
Italo Lopez Garcia
University of Southern California, CA·Social Science
Measure whether gains from Msingi Bora, an 8-month group parenting program in rural Kenya, persist about five years later in children's cognitive, language, executive function and social-emotional skills, using a follow-up survey across 60 villages.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
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