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Columbia University/Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene (RFMH) and Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology
Columbia University/Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene (RFMH) and Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, subcontracting partners: MHA of NYC has established subcontracts with Madelyn S. Gould, M.P.H., Ph.D., at Columbia University/RFMH and John Kalafat, Ph.D., at Rutgers University. This team of investigators is responsible for evaluating the goals of the national network development target plan. The evaluation will benefit from the team?s research experience in the areas of suicide risk and evaluation research. Their work on the SAMHSA-funded Hotline Evaluation and Linkage Project (HELP I) provided them with experience in working collaboratively with centers, advisory boards, and other stakeholders. The main thrust of the current quality assurance/evaluation portion of the project includes a systematic assessment of network site crisis/hotline activity and current barriers to network entry. The evaluation will consist of utilization-focused process evaluation to inform program development and outcome evaluation to assess program impact for each of the goals of the project. A brief biographical sketch of each investigator follows.
- Dr. Gould is a professor in psychiatry and public health (epidemiology) at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and is a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Her longstanding research interests include the epidemiology of youth suicide as well as the evaluation of youth suicide prevention interventions, including the utility of telephone crisis services for teenagers. Dr. Gould has received numerous federally funded grants from the National Institutes of Health?s National Institute of Mental Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Gould has participated in a number of State and national government commissions, including the 1978 President?s Commission on Mental Health and the Secretary of Health and Human Services?s Task Force on Youth Suicide (1989). She was an expert reviewer in 1998 for the National Suicide Prevention Conference on Advancing the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, authored the chapter on youth suicide prevention for the Surgeon General?s 1999 National Suicide Prevention Strategy, and served as a leadership consultant for the Surgeon General?s Leadership Working Group for a National Suicide Prevention Strategy. Dr. Gould was a founding member of the New York State Suicide Prevention Council and is engaged actively in the ongoing development of a suicide prevention plan for New York State. Dr. Gould has a strong commitment to applying her research to program and policy development.
- Dr. Kalafat is a faculty member of the Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. He has more than 30 years of experience with telephone crisis services, including cofounding and directing a telephone counseling and referral service, providing training and consultation to crisis services, and developing emergency response systems. He has contributed chapters on training telephone counselors and crisis intervention and counseling by telephone in Crisis Intervention and Counseling by Telephone. He currently serves as an evaluation consultant on several federally funded prevention programs, including Maine?s Statewide Youth Suicide Prevention Project, funded by CDC. Dr. Kalafat has conducted several evaluations of suicide prevention and crisis response services, most recently as principal investigator of the SAMHSA HELP I grant, which assessed the crisis and suicide outcomes associated with calls to a national sample of telephone crisis services.
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