Christina Kang-Yi , Ph.D.
The mission of Dr. Kang-Yi’s research is to promote mental health and wellbeing of individuals with psychiatric needs. For this mission, Dr. Kang-Yi partners with publicly funded agencies to identify priorities and critical problems, examine implementation and outcomes of interest, and develop ways to scale effective programs.
Dr. Kang-Yi has conducted large-scale effectiveness evaluations of community mental health programs for over 15 years. Dr. Kang-Yi’s series of school-mental health program evaluations, which used sophisticated methods to integrate Medicaid claims and school records, demonstrated the limited effectiveness of school mental health programs in schools with poor behavior management strategies in place, as measured by out-of-school suspensions. She has collaborated on multiple studies that examined implementation of mental health interventions in school setting.
Her research also has addressed disparities in mental health and promoted cultural responsiveness in mental health care through diverse collaborative studies. Dr. Kang-Yi and her colleagues’ prenatal mental illness study found that Black and Hispanic women with psychiatric disorders are significantly more likely than White women with psychiatric disorders to have pregnancy complications. This study addressed the importance of preconception interventions for prenatal mental illness, especially given their association with pregnancy complications, and was selected for the Editor’s Choice 2021 of Psychiatric Services, a Journal of American Psychiatric Association.
Dr. Kang-Yi’s research has been funded through local government contractual agreements, federal grants such as the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) and the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), and foundations.
Keywords: Mental Health Service Research, Implementation and Outcome Evaluation, Mental Health Disparity, Cultural Diversity
Grant Funding
Title: TeamSTEPPS Project (Co-I)
Sponsor Agency: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
Brief Overview of Aims: This project aims to optimize school mental health care delivery by improving the quality of teamwork between mental health professionals and teachers and administrators.
Role: Co-Investigator
Total Dollar Amount: $1.17 million
Funding Period: 4/2020-3/2025 (served until 12/2022)
Title: Optimizing the Impact of Public-Academic Partnerships in Fostering Policymakers’ Use of Research Evidence, (PI)
Sponsor Agency: William T. Grant Foundation
Brief Overview of Aims: This project aimed to examine whether and how public-academic partnership based research can promote public-care agency leaders’ use of research evidence in promoting youth mental health and wellbeing.
Role: Co-Investigator
Total Dollar Amount: $49,733
Funding Period: 10/2018-9/2019
Title: Philadelphia Integrated System of Care Expansion (PISCE), (Co-I)
Sponsor Agency: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
Brief Overview of Aims: This project aimed to improve and expand High-Fidelity Wraparound Services for children and families.
Role: Principal Investigator
Total Dollar Amount: $588,236
Funding Period: 9/2015-9/2019
Title: Addressing Gender Difference within and across Race/Ethnicity to Effectively Promote Psychiatric Treatment Engagement of Youth (PI)
Sponsor Agency: Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Pilot Grant, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine
Brief Overview of Aims: This project aimed to examine psychiatric treatment engagement among youths with psychiatric disorders by gender within and across race/ethnicity to identify effective strategies in designing youth engagement intervention that can be effectively added all types of psychiatric treatment in practice regardless of specifically targeted therapy.
Role: Principal Investigator Total Dollar Amount: $39,868
Funding Period: 7/2017-6/2018
Title: Evaluation Center
Sponsor Agency: City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and disAbility Services (DBHIDS, Primary Investigator)
Brief Overview of Aims: This project aimed to help DBHIDS identify priorities, critical problems, and questions, examine implementation and outcomes of interest, and develop ways to scale effective programs.
Role: Primary Investigator
Total Dollar Amount: $799,972/annual direct costs
Funding Period: 1/2008-12/2022 (annual contracts)
Professional Achievements
2014
Mental Health Section Award (given to the Mental Health Policy Committee), Awarded by American Public Health Association
2017-2018
Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Pilot Grant Awardee, Awarded by University of Pennsylvania
2017-2022
Senior Fellow, Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania
2021
Editor’s Choice 2021 for Improving Access to Perinatal Mental Health Care, Awarded by Psychiatric Services, Journal of American Psychiatric Association
Selected Publications
- Kang-Yi CD, Arnold KT, Tieu T, Olubiyi O, Xie M, Lawson GM, et al. The relationship between school mental health service use in high school and educational outcomes of adolescents with psychiatric disorders. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry. In Press. doi: 10.1177/13591045231190852. PubMed PMID: 37467422.
- Kang-Yi CD, Kuriyan A, Kinkler G, Pisciella AE, Williams T, Wolk CB. Generating Actionable Evidence for School-Based Mental Health Service Delivery: Public-Academic Partnership Based Evaluations. Community Ment Health J. 2023. Epub 2023/06/08. doi: 10.1007/s10597-023-01147-5. PubMed PMID: 37289384.
- Kuriyan A, Kinkler G, Cidav Z, Kang-Yi C, Eiraldi R, Salas E, et al. Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) to Improve Collaboration in School Mental Health: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Study. JMIR Res Protoc. 2021;10(2):e26567. Epub 2021/02/09. doi: 10.2196/26567. PubMed PMID: 33555258; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC7899798.
- Locke J, Kang-Yi C, Frederick L, Mandell DS. Individual and organizational characteristics predicting intervention use for children with autism in schools. Autism. 2020;24(5):1152-63. doi: 10.1177/1362361319895923. PubMed PMID: 31867987.
- Kang-Yi CD, Kornfield SL, Epperson CN, Mandell DS. Relationship Between Pregnancy Complications and Psychiatric Disorders: A Population-Based Study with a Matched Control Group. Psychiatr Serv. 2018;69(3):300-7. Epub 2017/11/16. doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201700097. PubMed PMID: 29137553; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5937933.
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