John Landsverk
John Landsverk is a senior research scientist at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego, where he directs the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC). CASRC has received core funding since 1994 from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to focus on research to inform the improvement of mental health care for children and adolescents involved in public service systems. Dr. Landsverk also leads the NIMH funded Child and Adolescent Interdisciplinary Research Network (CAIRN), a network of 25 researchers and service system managers from the disciplines of clinical and developmental psychology, anthropology, sociology, social work, health care, economics, and pediatrics. The principal focus of this network is to improve mental health services for children involved with child welfare systems, with particular emphasis on the use of evidence-based interventions that address externalizing problems. Since 1999, Dr. Landsverk has been the principal investigator of the NIMH funded study, Caring for Children in Child Welfare, that has examined the use of mental health and developmental services for children involved in the national child welfare study, National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being.
Dr. Landsverk is a core member of the Youth Mental Health Network funded by the MacArthur Foundation and led by Dr. John Weisz. Dr. Landsverk has published widely from his research on mental health care for children in child welfare settings, including an extensive review chapter, "Mental health services for children reported to child protective services," which appeared in The APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreatment, 2nd Edition. He is a co-author on the recently published Beyond Common Sense: Children Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform.
The principal focus of Dr. Landsverk's current work is the improvement of mental health and developmental services for children and families involved with child welfare service systems, through the use of evidence-based treatments and interventions. Consistent with that focus, Dr. Landsverk chairs the Braam Oversight Panel, a five member committee that is providing technical assistance and monitoring oversight for a mediated settlement to a class action litigation involving the child welfare system in the State of Washington.
Dr. Landsverk has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Minnesota and completed a post-doctorate in psychiatric epidemiology and mental health program evaluation at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Landsverk is professor emeritus in the School of Social Work at San Diego State University. Dr. Landsverk has been involved in training many young research scientists both within social work and across other behavioral science disciplines to compete successfully for NIH and other federal funding. He currently serves as principal sponsor on 11 K awards from the National Institutes of Health, primarily in the area of mental health care for children and adolescents. He also serves as a core faculty on the recently NIMH funded R25 training grant "Child Intervention, Prevention, and Services Summer Institute".