BONNIE ZIMA, MD, MPH

Community Psychiatry

Child Psychiatry

Justice-Involved

HSS and Child Psychiatry Faculty

bzima@mednet.ucla.edu

Bonnie T. Zima, MD, MPH is a child psychiatrist and health services researcher. She is the Associate Director of the UCLA Center for Health Services and Society and Professor-in-Residence (Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the unmet need for mental health services among high risk child populations (i.e., homeless, foster care, juvenile justice) and the quality of mental health care for children enrolled in Medicaid-funded outpatient programs.

Dr. Zima is a standing member of the Steering Committee for the National Quality Forum’s (NQF) Behavioral Health Measures Project, a past member for the NQF Child Outcomes and Child Health Projects, and member of the APA Council on Quality. She led the first statewide study on quality of publicly-funded outpatient child mental health care which developed and reported adherence to 121 quality indicators. Guided by this research, Dr. Zima led a five-year NIMH-funded study that examined the quality of care and 18-month clinical outcomes among 546 children receiving care for ADHD in primary care and specialty mental health clinics within one of the nation’s largest managed care Medicaid health plans. Building upon this work, she was recently awarded a state contract (as Co-PI) to develop in partnership with the State, a performance measurement system for children receiving mental health care in Medi-Cal funded outpatient programs. The overarching goal is to improve the quality of care for children through improved monitoring of the care delivered and how it relates to clinical outcomes that are meaningful to parents, provides and agency leaders.

In addition, Dr. Zima is Principal Investigator (PI) of MH2™, Mobile Health for Mental Health, a web-based application to optimize stimulant medication treatment for children with ADHD served in publicly-funded mental health programs. She is also PI on a five-year study to develop and pilot test integrated care models for children in two Chicago-based programs serving low-income children in high crime neighborhoods. Further, Dr. Zima is Co-Investigator on a three-year PCORI-funded randomized trial of a telehealth intervention to provide mental health services to children served within a network of federally qualified health care centers in Los Angeles County (PI: Coker).

Her research has received all three national research awards from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). Dr. Zima is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee to Evaluate the Supplemental Security Income Disability Program for Children with Mental Disorders, AACAP’s Work Group on Research, Co-Chair of the Mental Health Work Group for the CHIPRA-AHRQ Center of Excellence for Children with Complex Health Care Needs (PI: Mangione-Smith), and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and AACAP.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Zima BT, Hurlburt M, Knapp P, Ladd H, Tang L, Duan N, Wallace P, Rosenblatt A Landsverk J, Wells K. Quality of publicly-funded outpatient specialty mental health care for common childhood psychiatric disorders in California. J Am Acad Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 2005; 44:130-144.

Zima BT, Bussing R, Tang L, Zhang L, Ettner SE, Belin TR, Wells KB. Quality of care for childhood ADHD in a large managed care Medicaid program. J Am Acad Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 2010;49(12):1225-1237.

Archangeli C, Marti FA, Wobga-Pasiah EA, Zima B. Mobile health interventions for psychiatric conditions in children: a systematic review. Health Information Technology for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry issue of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America. 2016.

Zima BT, Rodean J, Hall M, Bardach N, Coker T, Berry J. Psychiatric disorders and trends in resource use in pediatric hospitals. Pediatrics.2016;138(5):ePub10/21/16. 10.1542/peds.2016-0909.

AVAILABLE TO RESIDENTS FOR:

Involvement in the following research projects:

  • MH2/SM2: mHealth Intervention to Optimize Stimulant Medication Treatment for ADHD

  • H3: Development and Evaluation of Two Integrated Care Models for Low-income Families in Chicago

  • National Pediatric Hospitalizations Resource Use: Influence of Mental Health Problems (must have experience in data analysis and interpretation using large administrative data)