Profiles

Bonnie T. Zima, MD MPH is a child psychiatrist and health services researcher. She is Professor-in-Residence and Founding Director of the Mental Health Informatics and Data Science (MINDS) Hub in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. She is a national and international leader in child mental health services research. Her research is dedicated to improving the quality of child mental health care, with priority placed on children enrolled in Medicaid-funded outpatient programs and underserved, at risk child populations. Her research spans identification of high unmet need for mental health care among high risk child populations, national pediatric hospitalization resource utilization and costs, validity of national quality measures, pediatric integrated care models, pediatric workforce development, and application of technologies and clinical informatics to improve child mental health care. She has received continuous extramural funding for her research throughout her career, exceeding $10.5 million. She has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed research papers in leading scientific journals, 10 book chapters, 72 national or technical reports, and >300 invited presentations. She has received all three national research awards from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) as well as her Department’s Outstanding Research Mentor Award in 2022. In addition, Dr. Zima is a Member of the U.S. Child and Adult Core Set Annual Review Workgroup for Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (the Academies) Committee on the Pediatric Subspecialty Workforce and its Impact on Child Health and Well-Being, National Advisory Board, Enhancing Systems of Care for Children with Medical Complexity Coordinating Center funded by HRSA, Advisory Group Member for the Partnership for Quality Measurement’s Endorsement and Maintenance Management of Acute and Chronic Committee, Corresponding Member of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Committee on Quality Measure and Performance, Co-Chair of the AACAP Healthcare Access and Economics Committee, and Ex-officio Member AACAP Committee on Research. She completed a ten-year term on the Standing Behavioral Health and Substance Use Committee for the National Quality Forum (contract awarded to Battelle in 2023) and a five-year term as Consulting Editor for the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. She is a Distinguished Fellow of APA and AACAP.