Lauren M. Haack, PhD, is an associate professor and attending psychologist with research and clinical interests focused on 1) cultural influences to mental health conceptualization, assessment, and treatment, and 2) accessible and culturally appropriate evidence-based services for traditionally underserved youth and families worldwide. When not conducting clinical research and teaching, she splits her clinical time between the UCSF Hyperactivity Attention and Learning Problems (HALP) and Wavefront Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Clinics, as well as the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Portal (CAPP), providing evidence-based services, supervision, and training.
After receiving her PhD at Marquette University and completing a predoctoral internship at UCSF specializing in evidence-based psychosocial services for youth with ADHD, Dr. Haack received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual Postdoctoral Fellows with a project entitled “Culturally Sensitive School-Home Behavioral Program for Latino Children with ADHD” funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. This mixed-method investigation of the Collaborative Life Skills (CLS) program inspired her subsequent National Institute of Health (NIH) Fogarty Global Health fellowship pilot-testing an adapted version of CLS (CLS-FUERTE) in Culiacan, Mexico. This project represented the first known effort to implement and evaluate a behavioral school-based program to improve youth attention and behavior in Latin America. Dr. Haack’s current Hellman Fellows family award project aims to adapt an existing digital school mental health program into Spanish for Latinx youth with ADHD and ODD.
Since being appointed UCSF faculty in 2017, Dr. Haack has been involved in numerous collaborative clinical research projects with an overarching focus on harnessing technology to improve access to and quality of evidence-based mental health care for diverse youth and families. Specifically, she collaborates on an IES/US Department of Education (DOE) funded project called: “Web-Based Professional Development for School Mental Health Providers in Evidence-Based Practices for Attention and Behavior Challenges.” to develop a web-based professional development program for school mental health providers learning and implementing a behavioral treatment for youth with attention and impulse-control difficulties, as well as a NIMH grant to develop a dHealth app to support behavioral parent training. Dr. Haack co-wrote an R34 to NIMH and a UCSF Resource Allocation Program (RAP) Digital Mental Health Award grant with co-authors (Drs. Sabrina Darrow and Adrian Aguilera) focused on improving engagement in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Depression services for diverse teens using a mobile health text message system (HealthySMS); she also collaborates on a RAP award with Dr. Darrow to investigate a text-message system adjunct to Dialectical Behavioral Therapy for Adolescents (DBT-A). Dr. Haack also collaborates on projects with the UCSF Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health (JJBH) team aiming to implement and evaluate gender-responsive services to girls ages 12-24 in the community and community providers serving systems-involved youth in evidence-based telehealth practices.
Dr. Haack also has a passion for community engagement and training. Within the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Dr. Haack leads the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (CAP) FIELD seminar focused on Forensic psychiatry, Inclusive services and Social Justice, Education settings, Literature exploration, and child Development. She also developed and provides seminars on mental health disorders and evidence-based techniques to the CAP fellows, a lecture on systems-level evidence-based psychotherapies adapted for low-resource settings and the challenges and methodological solutions to adaption efforts for the UCSF Psychiatry HEAL Fellowship in Global Mental Health (GMH) Seminar; and the UCSF Child & Adolescent Services (CAS) Multicultural Clinical Training Program's Supervision, Consultation, Conflict Management, and Professional Development for Emerging Clinical Psychologists Seminar. Externally, Dr. Haack has provided guest lectures and interviews at UC Berkeley and San Jose State. She also teaches courses on General Psychology, Cross Cultural Psychology, and Advanced Research Methods at the University of San Francisco (USF). Within the area of Global Health, Dr. Haack co-wrote and received a grant from the Innovative Learning Technology Initiative’s “Using Technology to Enhance UC Students’ Learning Experiences” with three other University of California faculty to develop and deliver a web-based course entitled "Introduction to Global Mental Health."