Miya Barnett with GGSE graduate students and promotoras

Miya Barnett (top, far right) with GGSE graduate students and promotoras

Miya Barnett and Erika Luis Sanchez of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School—along with Mariana Harms from Child Abuse Listening and Mediation (CALM)—will give the webinar “Partnering with Community Health Workers to Increase Caregiver Engagement in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy” on Tuesday, March 16 at 1 pm Eastern. The team will discuss their work in partnering with community health workers named promotoras to supporting the delivery of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). The team will highlight the benefits and challenges of this work. The event is sponsored by The Evidence-based Practice and Innovation Center (EPIC), which was established in 2013 to advance system-wide strategies that support the implementation, sustainability and accessibility of behavioral health evidence-based practices in Philadelphia, and by The Philadelphia Alliance for Child Trauma Services (PACTS).

One must register online prior to the event to attend. 

Dr. Miya Barnett is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical & School Psychology at the Gevirtz School. She is the director of The Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Clinic, which provides state-of-the-art therapy for young children and their families. PCIT is an evidence-based treatment backed by over 30 years of research for children ages 2 to 7 who have challenging behaviors. PCIT teaches parents and other caregivers how to enhance their relationship with their child, increase positive behaviors in children, and reduce problem behaviors in home, school, and public places. PCIT therapists work with the caregiver and child together to improve child behavior and reducing parenting stress.

Barnett also runs the Promoting Access through Dissemination/implementation Research on Evidence-based Services (PADRES) Lab. Barnett’s research is focused on how implementation science can address mental health service disparities for ethnic minority children and families. She is specifically focused on how Lay Health Workers (LHWs) can be mobilized to increase access to evidence-based practices for underserved communities. She received a Mentored Research Scientist Career Development Award from National Institute of Mental Health, which investigated how LHWs can increase engagement in PCIT for Latinx, immigrant families.

Erika Luis Sanchez is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology working under Dr. Barnett. Sanchez earned her B.A in Psychology at California State University, San Marcos and M.A. in Psychology at San Diego State University. As an undergraduate student, Sanchez was a Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement Program (RISE) scholar; she is currently a Eugene Cota Robles scholar.