Jeanne Miranda, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Medicine and the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA and is a core scientist in the Combination Prevention Core at CHIPTS. Her major research contributions have been in evaluating the impact of mental health care for ethnic minority communities. She conducted a trial of treatment of depression in impoverished minority patients at San Francisco General Hospital. From that trial, she found that traditional care for depression supplemented by case management offered additional benefits for Latino patients but not for African American and white participants. She has also studied the impact of care for depression in low-income, minority women screened through county entitlement programs in the Washington DC area. This study found that short-term care for depression is effective for impoverished women, but outreach is necessary to engage these women in care. Jeanne has received several awards for her work, including the Team Science Award from the Association for Clinical and Translational Science and the 2015 UCLA Community Program of the Year – Landmark Award, for her Community Partners in Care project.
Jeanne was an investigator in one of the first studies of HIV in homeless populations published in 1994 and has recently returned to HIV research. She is conducting a pilot investigation of a mental health resilience intervention in impoverished young women in Uganda, 54% of whom are HIV positive. She is combining an intervention to support HIV treatment compliance with a resilience intervention that is aimed at reducing depression and increasing motivation. She is also studying government programs, such as a program of micro-finance funded by the Ugandan government, to determine the best way to get social programs to poor youth in Uganda.
In addition, Jeanne is currently working with two community partners, TIES for Families and the Center for Adoption Support and Education to evaluate an intervention her team developed to provide care for families adopting older children from foster care. She and her colleagues recently finished a book about this therapy that will be published in Summer 2018.
When not at work, Jeanne enjoys spending time with her three children and two granddaughters. She is an avid cook. She brings her love of cooking to her political activism. She is a member of the political group Team TO Resist and Rise where she plans fundraisers and is co-lead of the team that cooks for fundraising events. She also enjoys photography, bringing back many wonderful pictures from Uganda, some of which decorate her suite of offices in the Wilshire building.
Each month, we’re featuring a member of our CHIPTS family and their work! To see past spotlights, check them out on the spotlights page and make sure to check back to see who we feature next!