Tara Earl, Ph.D., M.S.W.
Boston
College
Junior Investigator, Vulnerable Populations
Project Title: A Different Point of View: Multi-Racial/Ethnic Patient-Centered Quality of Mental Health Care.
"Since being awarded [the New Connections grant], I have been blown away by resources that have been made available to us. The structure of the program supports our work and provides opportunities that some of us would not receive otherwise. Ultimately, I want to be able to translate my research into practice, and the New Connections Award is definitely putting me on the right path."
Project Description
Earl's study seeks to improve the quality of care for multi-racial and ethnic populations in public safety-net psychiatric hospital settings.
She plans to use data from the Patient Provider Encounter Study to generate mental health care quality indicators. To identify additional perspectives on important indicators of good quality care, Earl will conduct focus groups with underrepresented patient groups. She also plans to generate a patient-centered measure of quality care that includes elements identified to be most relevant for these types of patient groups.
Earl will address three research questions: (1) What are indicators of "good" quality mental health care that patients identify and how do these indicators differ between patient groups?; (2) What additional indicators of "good" quality mental health care do patients of under-represented patient groups identify?; and (3) How do the indicators of quality identified in the Patient Provider Encounter study and in her focus groups differ from indicators of quality of care represented in the extant literature?
Biography
Tara R. Earl, Ph.D., M.S.W., is an assistant professor in the graduate school of social work at Boston College. She has focused her research career on better understanding and improving the quality of mental health care for those who are underserved and underrepresented.
Her research has examined the ways in which Black Americans and other ethnic minorities conceptualize and respond to caring for a family member diagnosed with a severe mental illness, understanding the patient-provider interaction with an emphasis on Black patients from a social/cultural perspective, and exploring racial and ethnic differences when respondents positively endorse symptoms of psychosis. Currently, she is studying how to improve the quality of mental health care for individuals of color.
Earl received her doctorate in social work from the University of Texas at Austin. She then received research training through a National Institute of Mental Health-funded Minority Supplement with the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School.
