For years of work dedicated to improving life for people with depression, Kenneth Wells, M.D., M.P.H., was named the winner of the 2001 Distinguished Investigator Award of the Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy.
In June 2000 the Alpha Center and the Association for Health Services Research merged to form the Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy, which provides technical assistance to researchers and policy professionals about health services research and health policy information.
Robert Brook, M.D., vice president and director of RAND Health, presented the plaque to Wells on June 11 at the opening session of the academy’s annual meeting in Atlanta for “significant and long-lasting contributions to the field of health services research.”
Wells is director and principal investigator of the Research Center of Managed Care for Psychiatric Disorders and director of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)-NPI Health Services Research Center. He is also director of the Faculty Scholars Program in mental health services research at UCLA, which is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The program provides psychiatrists, particularly women and minority members, with training in mental health services research.
As primary investigator of Partners in Care, a study program that seeks to improve the quality of care for people with depression in primary care settings, Wells developed program materials to help primary care physicians recognize and treat depression in their patients. The materials were used in six managed care organizations from 1995 to 2000, and the effects of the program materials are still being evaluated.
Along with colleague Lisa Rubenstein, M.D., Wells provided the managed care organizations with expertise on how to use the materials.
“I am particularly pleased, as a psychiatrist, to have received recognition within the more general field of health services research,” Wells told Psychiatric News. “I was attracted to this work because I thought that psychiatry needed a stronger evidence basis.”
Wells told Psychiatric News that he believes that health services research is an exciting and growing field that informs practice and health care policy by providing information on how organization, financing, and changes in service delivery affect quality, costs of care, and patient outcomes.
Wells has conducted a great deal of research on the clinical impact of variations in health services systems and financing. ▪
