Rosemary Meza, PhD, MS

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“I strive to increase access to high-quality mental health services and reduce disparities in service access through developing and testing methods to improve the adoption and sustained use of mental health innovations in resource-limited settings.”

Rosemary Meza, PhD, MS

Collaborative Scientist, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Biography

Rosemary Meza, PhD, MS, is a clinical psychologist and implementation scientist focused on reducing the gap in access to quality mental health services in community-based settings. Her work centers on developing new solutions or optimizing existing solutions to improve the quality of mental health services. Within this work, Dr. Meza emphasizes community engagement, practical solutions, and sustainability.

At Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Dr. Meza is a collaborative researcher on 2 P50 center grants that aim to advance methods to identify barriers and facilitators of implementation success, match strategies to address those barriers, and optimize strategies to improve implementation of health innovations.  These studies aim to advance the use of evidence-based innovation in cancer care and youth mental health. Dr. Meza is also leading a pilot study to advance knowledge of how peer-support interventions work to improve mental health services for youth and to optimize a peer-support intervention to improve cognitive behavioral therapy delivery in the context of Medicaid-funded youth mental health services in Washington state.

Dr. Meza completed her pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training at the University of Washington. Her work centered on optimizing leadership and supervision to improve the delivery of mental health services for youth in Washington state. Supported by a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) diversity supplement, she leveraged participatory methods to engage stakeholders in identifying practical solutions to address barriers to implementing a trauma-focused treatment in schools in Western Kenya. Dr. Meza also completed her clinical internship at Seattle Children’s Hospital and specializes in the treatment of child and adolescent anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and parent training to address a variety of youth behavioral challenges.

Areas of research focus

Recent Publications

Drahota A, Meza RD, Bustos TE, Sridhar A, Martinez JI, Brikho B, Stahmer AC, Aarons GA. Implementation-as-usual in community-based organizations providing specialized services to individuals with autism spectrum disorder: a mixed methods study. Adm Policy Ment Health. 2021 May;48(3):482-498. doi: 10.1007/s10488-020-01084-5. Epub 2020 Sep 18. PubMed

Meza RD, Kiche S, Soi C, Khairuzzaman AN, Nales CJR, Whetten K, Wasonga AI, Amanya C, Dorsey S. Barriers and facilitators of child and guardian attendance in task-shifted mental health services in schools in western Kenya. Glob Ment Health (Camb). 2020 Jun 30;7:e16. doi: 10.1017/gmh.2020.9. eCollection 2020. PubMed

Dorsey S, Gray CL, Wasonga AI, Amanya C, Weiner BJ, Belden CM, Martin P, Meza RD, Weinhold AK, Soi C, Murray LK, Lucid L, Turner EL, Mildon R, Whetten K. Advancing successful implementation of task-shifted mental health care in low-resource settings (BASIC): protocolfor a stepped wedge cluster randomized trial. BMC Psychiatry. 2020 Jan 8;20(1):10. doi: 10.1186/s12888-019-2364-4. PubMed

Dorsey S, Meza RD, Martin P, Gray CL, Triplett NS, Soi C, Woodard GS, Lucid L, Amanya C, Wasonga A, Whetten K. Lay counselor perspectives of providing a child-focused mental health intervention for children: task-sharing in the education and health extension sectors in Kenya. Front Psychiatry. 2019 Dec 17;10:860. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00860. eCollection 2019. PubMed

Woodard GS, Triplett NS, Martin P, Meza RD, Lyon AR, Berliner L, Dorsey S. Implementing mental health services for children and adolescents: caregiver involvement in school-based care, Psychiatr Serv. 2020 Jan 1;71(1):79-82. doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201900160. Epub 2019 Sep 25. PubMed

 

Research

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Improving and advancing mental health care

KPWHRI researchers are contributing to better mental health care for people nationwide.

IMPACT Center

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Improving mental health care for youth

A new center will support using evidence-based practices in under-resourced settings such as schools.