I am a public mental health scientist who uses human-centred design to help health and community service providers in low resource settings actively engage young people in the development of scalable and sustainable solutions to positively transform their health, wealth and relationships. After completing an undergraduate degree in Human Biology at Stanford University, I moved to England to study Evidence-based Social Work (MSc) at the University of Oxford. In 2012 I completed a PhD in Psychiatry examining the relationships between mental health expenditure, service provision, and quality of care in longer term psychiatric rehabilitation facilities across Europe at University. In the same year I joined the faculty at King’s College London as well as the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a Lecturer and member of the Centre for Global Mental Health. I am the Deputy Programme Lead of the MSc in Global Mental Health and co-organiser of one of the programme’s core modules (Theory to Practice in Global Mental Health).  

My research aims to accelerate the implementation of innovative mental health interventions for adolescents and young adults in low-resource settings. I am PI of Catalyst: Better Mental Health for Young Mozambican Mothers, which uses human-centred design to engage young women and other key stakeholders in the development of an intervention to prevent mental disorders among women aged 16-24 years during pregnancy and the year after birth. My other current research focuses on the adaptation and evaluation of an electronic version of the mhGAP Intervention Guide for use in Nepal and Nigeria as well as the development of stigma reduction interventions and assessment tools to measure stigma and discrimination. I am also Deputy Director of the College’s WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health. 

Research Interests 

• Child and adolescent mental health  
• Maternal mental health 
• Health service evaluation 
• Intervention development 

Teaching

• Theory to Practice in Global Mental Health.

Expertise and Public Engagement

• Invitations to expert group meetings (UK Foreign Office, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef, Save the Children, and the Canadian Ministry of Health) and commissioned work (WHO and Save the Children, UK Department for International Development).  
• Chaired a panel on innovation in mental health at the Emerge conference on social innovation hosted by the Saïd Business School, Oxford University and presented at the Design in Health meeting (Royal Society of Medicine). I also participated in a Mental Health Foundation podcast discussion of my research