Staff Biographies


Roberto Lewis-Fernández, M.D.- Director

Dr. Roberto Lewis-Fernández is Director of the NYS Cultural Competence Center of Excellence and the Hispanic Treatment Program at New York State Psychiatric Institute, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, and Lecturer on Social Medicine at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Harvard College in 1979, a Master’s Degree in comparative religion from Harvard Divinity School in 1982, and his M.D. from Yale Medical School in 1986. He obtained his psychiatric training at The Cambridge Hospital (1986-90) and completed a Dupont-Warren psychiatric research fellowship (1990-91) and an NIMH-sponsored fellowship in clinically applied medical anthropology (1991-93) at Harvard Medical School. From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Lewis-Fernández worked for the Puerto Rico Health Department implementing an innovative mental health consultation-liaison program for rural primary care clinics.
His research focuses on the socio-cultural determinants of illness experience, symptomatology, help-seeking behavior, and treatment outcome among U.S. Latinos diagnosed with anxiety, depressive, and dissociative disorders. Specific interests include the relationship between psychiatric diagnoses and Latino popular syndromes; socio-cultural factors associated with treatment dropout; misdiagnosis of psychosis as a result of folk idioms of distress; symptom presentations of trauma-related disorders among Latino patients; and collaboration models between mental health and primary care medicine to increase access to culturally competent care for consumers with psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Lewis-Fernández was on the DSM-IV Cross-Cultural Committee and the NIMH Study Group on Mental Health Services in Specialty Settings (2002-2007). He is currently the chair of the Cultural Psychiatry Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, a member of the Committee on Psychiatric Diagnosis and Assessment of the American Psychiatric Association, and a member of the Community Services Board of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. From 1996 to 2007, he also served as Editor of the Cases Section of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, which publishes clinical cases illustrating the impact of culture on the symptoms, course, and outcome of psychiatric disorders and patients' help-seeking choices.


Leopoldo J. Cabassa, Ph.D., M.S.W- Assistant Director

Dr. Leopoldo J. Cabassa is the Assistant Director of the NYS Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence (CECC) and Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.  He received his M.S.W and Ph. D. from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis.  He completed an NIMH pre-doctoral fellowship (2001-2004) at the Center for Mental Health Services Research at Washington University and a post-doctoral fellowship (2005-2006) at the University of Southern California’s (USC) School of Social Work.   Prior to joining the CECC, Dr. Cabassa was an Assistant Professor at the USC School of Social Work and at the USC Keck School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

His research centers on understanding the causes of racial and ethnic disparities in mental health care and in developing and implementing culturally tailored interventions aimed at reducing these disparities.  His scholarship and publications have focused on access to mental health services, acculturation theory and measures, depression and diabetes in the Latino community, depression treatments in primary care, suicidal behavior among Latina teens, the effects of language and ethnicity in the psychiatric diagnostic process, and the quality of care in the social services.  His work has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.  Dr. Cabassa has taught graduate level courses in research and evaluation methods, mental health policy, and social work with Latino populations.  He is a member of the Society for Social Work and Research, the American Public Health Association, and the Academy of Health.


Jennifer L. Humensky, ph.d., research director

Dr. Jennifer L. Humensky is the Research Director of the NYS Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence (CECC) and Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She received her BA from the University of Pittsburgh, Master of Public Policy (MPP) from Georgetown University and PhD from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. She completed an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) T32 Predoctoral Fellowship (institutional) at the University of Chicago Harris School (2005-2008) and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Management of Complex Chronic Care in Hines, IL. Prior to her doctoral work, she was a Research Analyst at Mathematica Policy Research and completed internships at AHRQ and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.

Her research focuses on understanding the causes of racial disparities in mental health care, particularly for adolescents and young adults, and improving functional outcomes for these populations. Her scholarship and publications have focused on educational attainment of adolescents with mental health and substance abuse disorders, adolescent socioeconomic status as a predictor of substance abuse disorders, educational achievement of adolescents at risk for depressive disorder, and employment status of Iraq/Afghanistan era Veterans. Current projects at CECC include an evaluation of a program providing services to Latina adolescents at risk for suicide and their families and an assessment of factors influencing take-up of outpatient treatment following discharge from inpatient treatment for Latino patients in New York City. She serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for many peer-reviewed journals, including Social Science and Medicine and Journal of Adolescent Health.  

 

Doris Chang, PH.D.- Co-Investigator

Dr. Doris F. Chang is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research (NSSR).  She received her Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1997-1998, she was a visiting fellow at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Medical School (now Central South University) in China where she conducted her dissertation fieldwork on the neurasthenia, a culture-bound syndrome.  Dr. Chang completed a NIMH postdoctoral fellowship in Clinically-Relevant Medical Anthropology at the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School (2000-2002).  Her predoctoral and postdoctoral clinical training in Los Angeles and Boston centered on evidence-based treatments and cultural considerations in service provision to ethnic minority populations, with an emphasis on Asian Americans.  Prior to joining the faculty at the NSSR, Dr. Chang was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology, Ohio University. 

Grounded in an interdisciplinary framework, her research aims at improving the quality of mental health care provided to racial and ethnic minorities.  Specific interests include cross-cultural issues in diagnosis and mental health treatment, the impact of ethnic mismatch in psychotherapy process and outcome, racial/cultural identity, the cultural contexts of domestic violence and service delivery, social change and mental health service delivery in Chinese communities, and culturally grounded mental health treatments.  In 2006, she was the recipient of the Early Career Award from the Asian American Psychological Association.

Andel Nicasio, MSEd,CRC-Project Manager/ Community Project Associate

Andel joined the Center’s team after dedicating almost eight years working in leading positions with the Dominican Women’s Development Center (DWDC), a non-profit organization based in Washington Heights/Inwood.  She brings experience in designing and implementing culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions for the Latino community in health and mental health services, genetics education, HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, domestic violence intervention, and ESL and Spanish literacy programs.   While working at the DWDC, she earned a Masters degree in Rehabilitation Counseling at Hunter College.  In 2000, she received her B.A. in Organizational Psychology from the Madre y Maestra Pontifical Catholic University, Santiago, Dominican Republic. 

In addition to her work with the Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence, Andel also serves as a consultant for community based participatory research interventions with Community Health Workers on reproductive health, teen pregnancy, health, and genetics education. She is currently a board member of the Dominican Women’s Development Center and she is also part of the clinical staff at the Metropolitan Center for Mental Health-Families and Individuals in Recovery Program.

NEIL K. AGGARWAL, POST-DOCTORAL CLINICAL FELLOW

After graduating medical school from Case Western Reserve University in 2004, Neil Krishan Aggarwal studied religion and medical anthropology of South Asia at Harvard University.  He then trained in adult psychiatry at Yale University from 2007 to 2011.  He is interested in cultural psychiatry, global mental health, and psychiatric anthropology.

 

 

 
 
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