Katherine Sanchez
University of Texas at Arlington, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology
Depression and anxiety are common, but specialist mental health care is scarce in many places, especially in under-resourced states such as Texas. One way to close this gap is task-sharing, in which non-specialists are trained to deliver short, evidence-based psychological help in their own communities.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Psychology
Social Science
- Topics
community health workers
task-sharing
depression
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2028
What they work on
- Train undergraduate social work students as certified Community Health Workers using EMPOWER, a digital platform teaching counseling skills and behavioral activation, to deliver brief interventions for depression and anxiety.
- Co-produce, with students and community specialists, new training content on recognizing and addressing the social determinants of mental health in low-resource Texas communities.
- Implement digital peer supervision and real-time consultation for certified Community Health Workers, using the Lone Star Depression Challenge statewide infrastructure to sustain deployment into health systems.
More about the research
This project tests whether that model can be scaled up in rural and urban low-resource settings in Texas.
Why it matters
Texans with depression or anxiety in low-resource rural and urban communities could get earlier, more accessible care from trained community health workers who reflect their communities. The model may also help at-risk first-generation students stay in college and build careers. It could serve as a blueprint for universities nationwide to address unmet mental health needs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Bibhav Acharya
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology
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.
Daniel Walker
Ohio State University, OH·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test how integrated data systems, CHW learning collaboratives and resilience skill building affect timely prenatal and postpartum care, depression and preterm birth, using a 2x2 factorial cluster randomized trial across Ohio's Pathways Community Hubs.
Devin Mann
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Develop community health worker training modules for remote blood pressure monitoring, plus electronic health record support tools, using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research and user-centered design.
The school
University of Texas at Arlington: 11 labs on PI Pages, $154M a year on research, 177 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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