Dr. Alexander Young is Director of the Health Services Unit of the Department of Veterans Affairs Desert Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC); and Professor at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry.  He is a national expert regarding the evaluation and improvement of mental health care quality, and the use of health informatics.  He directs health services for the VA Desert Pacific MIRECC, a center with the goal of improving functional outcomes in individuals with psychotic disorders (www.desertpacific.mirecc.va.gov).  He is on the Executive Committee of the VA Mental Health Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI), a national VA program to improve care through collaboration between researchers and policy makers.  He is a member of the Executive Committees of the VA Desert Pacific MIRECC, the Greater Los Angeles VA Health Services Research Center of Excellence, and the UCLA-RAND NIMH Partnered Research Center for Quality Care.

Dr. Young’s research has improved our understanding of the quality of mental health care, provider behavior, and management of care.  In 1998, he published, in the Archives of General Psychiatry, the leading method for measuring the appropriateness of treatment for schizophrenia.  In 2000, in this same journal, he published the first national study of the quality of care for depression and anxiety.  He has also led research on strategies and methods for improving care.  In 2000, he published an article presenting a national competency set that defines the attitudes, skills and knowledge that providers need to have to successfully treat people with severe psychiatric disorders.  He subsequently published an instrument to evaluate these competencies, and an article demonstrating that a novel consumer-led intervention improved these competencies in a multi-site controlled trial.  In 2004, he published an article describing an informatics system for managing care in populations with chronic mental illness, and another describing computerized self-assessment in patients with psychotic disorders.  In 2007, he published results from CHIACC, a national project that improved consensus regarding information systems that support improved care for diabetes, depression and schizophrenia.  Dr. Young has received numerous honors, including the American Psychiatric Association 2000 Early Career Health Services Research Award, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill 2002 Exemplary Psychiatrist Award.  Dr. Young is currently leading EQUIP, a project that is implementing and evaluating methods for improving the quality of care for schizophrenia at 8 medical centers nationally.  He frequently presents and teaches about the treatment of severe mental illness, health services, and improving healthcare.

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