IBH Board of Directors
Steven C. Hayes, Ph.D. is the current President of IBH. A clinical psychologist and basic researcher, he is the author of 47 books and over 675 scientific articles. His career has focused on an analysis of the nature of human language and cognition and the application of this to the understanding and alleviation of human suffering. He is the developer of Relational Frame Theory, an account of human higher cognition, and has guided its extension to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Training (ACT in either case), a popular evidence-based form of psychotherapy that uses mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based methods. He is working to develop a process-based approach to evidence-based intervention. Dr. Hayes has been President of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, and of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, among other associations. He was the first Secretary-Treasurer of the Association for Psychological Science, which he helped form, and has served a 5-year term on the National Advisory Council for Drug Abuse in the National Institutes of Health. Google Scholar data ranks him among the top 950 most cited living scholars in all areas of study (http://www.webometrics.info/en/node/58) and Research.com ranks him as the 63rd highest impact psychologist worldwide. Dr. Hayes is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in addition to several other scientific societies. His work has been recognized by several awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy.
Rochelle I. Frank, PhD, is the secretary for IBH. She is a clinical psychologist in Oakland, CA with over 25 years of clinical and academic experience. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Syracuse University and completed her training at Yale Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Frank specializes in transdiagnostic evidence-based treatment of complex and co-occurring mood, anxiety, and trauma-related problems in adults and adolescents, and also treats high-conflict couples and families. She has received post-doctoral intensive training in DBT, CBT, ACT, and other evidence-based treatments, provides clinical consultation to other therapists, and has given educational workshops to both professional and lay audiences. Dr. Frank is an assistant clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and also holds faculty appointments at The Wright Institute, and the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. She is co-author of The Transdiagnostic Road Map to Case Formulation and Treatment Planning: Practical Guidance for Clinical Decision Making (Frank & Davidson, 2014; New Harbinger), and a contributing author to S. G. Hofmann & S. C. Hayes (Eds.), Beyond the DSM (in preparation, New Harbinger). She is a past-president of the Alameda County Psychological Association, and currently is a reviewer for the American Psychological Association and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.
Paresh Patel, MD, is the Treasurer for IBH. Dr. Paresh Patel is a child and adolescent psychiatrist with a background in molecular neurobiology and a longstanding passion for digital technologies that crystallized into a leadership role in clinical and research informatics at Michigan Medicine. He is the Ambulatory Care Clinical Chief and Director of Health Information Technology for the Department of Psychiatry and Associate Chief Medical Information Officer in the Office of Research at Michigan Medicine (University of Michigan Health System). He is an Epic certified Physician Builder Advanced with certifications in Analytics, Healthy Planet and Clarity. Dr. Patel’s primary interests are better integrating measurement-based care into clinical practice and leveraging emerging digital tools into clinical and clinical research workflows to improve quality and effectiveness.
Spencer Smith is the Executive Director of the Institute for Better Health. He is also the Executive Director for Praxis Continuing Education and Training; cofounder of Psychflex, Incorporated; and the author/contributor of many books in the fields of health, nutrition, and psychology, most notably Get out of Your Mind and Into Your Life which he coauthored with Steven C. Hayes, PhD. Spencer has worked for more than twenty years in many different areas related to the health and psychology fields including content creation, information distribution marketing, business development, continuing education, and ecommerce platform growth and deployment. In his spare time Spencer likes to hike, garden, and play games with his family. He is also a lifelong Aikido practitioner with a 6th degree black belt in the art.
Stefan G. Hofmann, Ph.D. is the Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Translational Clinical Psychology and the Department of Clinical Psychology, Philipps University Marburg, Germany, and Professor of Clinical Professor of Psychology at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University. He was president of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies and the International Association for Cognitive Psychotherapy. He is editor-in-chief of Cognitive Therapy and Research and has published more than 400 peer-reviewed journal articles and 20 books, including an Abnormal Psychology text book with Cengage, An Introduction of Modern CBT (Wiley-Blackwell), Emotion in Therapy: From Science to Practice (by Guilford Press), and the Anxiety Skills Workbook (by New Harbinger). He has been included in list of a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate and Thomson Reuters since 2015, among many other awards, including the Aaron T. Beck Award for Significant and Enduring Contributions to the Field of Cognitive Therapy by the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. He was an advisor to the DSM-5 Development Process and was a member of the DSM-5 Anxiety Disorder Sub-Work Group and member of the Cross-Cutting Culture Review Group of the DSM-5-TR. His research focuses on the mechanism of treatment change, translating discoveries from neuroscience into clinical applications, emotion regulation, and cultural expressions of psychopathology. He is the co-developer of Process-based Therapy, a transtheoretial model of psychotherapy based in evolutionary science using a complex network approach to target the fundamental processes of treatment change with simple core therapeutic principles. For more information, see: http://www.bostonanxiety.org/
Scientific Advisory Board
Michael Levin, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University, a licensed psychologist in the state of Utah, and the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. His research focuses on the development, evaluation, and implementation of digital technologies to address mental health concerns for a range of populations. Dr. Levin uses a process-based approach to examine the components and processes through which treatments improve mental health, particularly those based in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). He has conducted over 30 clinical trials evaluating online ACT interventions, which has been supported by funding sources including the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institute of Mental Health, and International OCD Foundation. Overall, Dr. Levin has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles and chapters as well as 4 books, including the upcoming Oxford Handbook of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. He is also the editor-in-chief for the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, which is one of the leading peer-reviewed journals for process-based therapy research.
Lance M McCracken is Professor and Head of Division in Clinical Psychology, Psychology Department, Uppsala University, Sweden, since 2018. He completed his PhD at West Virginia University and a post doctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins. He was employed at The University of Chicago, in Psychiatry and in Anesthesia and Critical Care from 1994 to 2000. He was Clinical Lead at the Bath Center for Pain Services in the UK, beginning in 2000, and left that post to take up a post as Professor of Behavioral Medicine at King’s College London in 2011 until 2018. He now has many years of clinical and research experience mainly in psychological and interdisciplinary approaches to chronic pain and other long-term health conditions.
Dr. Baljinder K. Sahdra is a researcher at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, North Sydney. She has published in top-tier journals in social, clinical, developmental, and educational psychology as well as assessment and research methods. Her publications employ a variety of methodological approaches, including machine learning, complex network analysis, structural equation modelling, multilevel modelling, mixture modelling, computational qualitative analysis, meta-analysis, and Bayesian statistics. Her recent research focuses on advancing idionomic methods that aim to combine insights from idiographic and nomothetic approaches.
Advisory Committee
John C. (Jack) Lewin, MD is CEO of American Health NY Inc., located in One Rockefeller Center. He is also Principal and Founder of Lewin and Associates LLC of New York City, and is also Chairman of the National Coalition on Health (NCHC) of Washington DC. American Health NY provides a wide array of health services, training and education, medical technology and equipment, and management expertise to the GCC countries in the Middle East. Lewin and Associates is a consulting organization focused on launching health start-up companies and also on developing policy and advocacy positions for health sector companies and government. Lewin is a senior medical advisor to MDPortals in NYC, an amazing aggregator and curator of medical records information from disparate sources. The NCHC is a highly respected national advocacy organization in Washington DC representing 90+ national health sector organizations and 150 million Americans. He serves on various boards and on many scientific advisory committees. Lewin has also worked as an FDA advisor and serves on several health sector company boards.
Lewin was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) in New York from 2013 to January 2017. CRF is a global research enterprise focused on preclinical science, human clinical trials, and cutting-edge education in interventional cardiology. TCT, CRF’s annual scientific symposium, is the world’s premier provider of advanced education in the field, drawing 12,000 leading cardiologists and healthcare professionals globally.
Dr. Lewin is an internationally recognized expert in promoting healthy populations and is a strong proponent of a more efficient, effective, and sustainable healthcare system that provides access to high-quality care for all. He has advised two Presidents of the United States as part of a rewarding career in health care, public health, and public policy.
From 2006 through 2012, Dr. Lewin was CEO of the 60,000 member American College of Cardiology (ACC), representing over 95% of U.S. cardiologists, 5,000 cardiovascular nurses and clinicians, and over 5,000 international members. The ACC has a distinguished reputation among professional societies for leadership in measuring quality and outcomes to improve physician/hospital performance. During his tenure ACC developed the National Cardiovascular Data Registries (NCDR) comprised of 200 million patient records from over 3,500 hospitals and 2,000 outpatient practices organized to systematically improve heart and vascular outcomes.
Prior to ACC, Dr. Lewin was Chief Executive Officer of the 40,000 member California Medical Association (CMA), where he also advised two Governors and the state legislature on health policy. He was Hawaii's Director of Health from 1986 to 1994, overseeing 6,000+ employees and a billion-dollar budget. In addition to helping Hawaii achieve near-universal access to health care and revitalizing statewide public health systems, he served as CEO of Hawaii’s 12-facility statewide public hospital system. Before that, as a Commissioned Officer in the United States Public Health Service, Dr. Lewin was the founder and first Director of the Navajo Nation Department of Health, serving the health needs of America's largest American Indian tribe.
In 2011, he was named as one of Modern Healthcare's “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.” He is a recipient of the AMA’s Nathan Davis Award, the American Hospital Association’s Justin Ford Kimball Award, and USPHS Commissioned Officer Association’s Health Leader of the Year award. Dr. Lewin received his BA in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Irvine, and his MD from the University of Southern California.
Lewin was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) in New York from 2013 to January 2017. CRF is a global research enterprise focused on preclinical science, human clinical trials, and cutting-edge education in interventional cardiology. TCT, CRF’s annual scientific symposium, is the world’s premier provider of advanced education in the field, drawing 12,000 leading cardiologists and healthcare professionals globally.
Dr. Lewin is an internationally recognized expert in promoting healthy populations and is a strong proponent of a more efficient, effective, and sustainable healthcare system that provides access to high-quality care for all. He has advised two Presidents of the United States as part of a rewarding career in health care, public health, and public policy.
From 2006 through 2012, Dr. Lewin was CEO of the 60,000 member American College of Cardiology (ACC), representing over 95% of U.S. cardiologists, 5,000 cardiovascular nurses and clinicians, and over 5,000 international members. The ACC has a distinguished reputation among professional societies for leadership in measuring quality and outcomes to improve physician/hospital performance. During his tenure ACC developed the National Cardiovascular Data Registries (NCDR) comprised of 200 million patient records from over 3,500 hospitals and 2,000 outpatient practices organized to systematically improve heart and vascular outcomes.
Prior to ACC, Dr. Lewin was Chief Executive Officer of the 40,000 member California Medical Association (CMA), where he also advised two Governors and the state legislature on health policy. He was Hawaii's Director of Health from 1986 to 1994, overseeing 6,000+ employees and a billion-dollar budget. In addition to helping Hawaii achieve near-universal access to health care and revitalizing statewide public health systems, he served as CEO of Hawaii’s 12-facility statewide public hospital system. Before that, as a Commissioned Officer in the United States Public Health Service, Dr. Lewin was the founder and first Director of the Navajo Nation Department of Health, serving the health needs of America's largest American Indian tribe.
In 2011, he was named as one of Modern Healthcare's “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.” He is a recipient of the AMA’s Nathan Davis Award, the American Hospital Association’s Justin Ford Kimball Award, and USPHS Commissioned Officer Association’s Health Leader of the Year award. Dr. Lewin received his BA in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Irvine, and his MD from the University of Southern California.
Research and Development Committee
Katie Gates, PhD is an Associate Professor of Quantitative Psychology in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a member of the Human Neuroimaging Group and affiliated faculty of the UNC Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC). She obtained her Ph.D. in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (quant focus) at Penn State, a Masters of Forensic Psychology at the City University of New York (John Jay College), and a BS in Psychology from Michigan State University. Katie’s work is motivated by problems in analyzing individual-level data. She develops, evaluates, and disseminates statistical programs that aid researchers in better quantifying behavioral, psychophysiological, and emotional processes across time. Katie co-authored a book titled, Intensive Longitudinal Analysis of Human Processes, among many other articles, chapters, and R packages.