Center for
Global Health

Associate Scholar

Languages: English

BIO STATEMENT

I am a female, Okinawan-Japanese American, clinical psychologist, and Instructor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine Center for Mental Health. My long-term professional goals include improving the health and well-being and ameliorating the suffering of people with substance use, emotional, and behavioral concerns in diverse community settings through identifying effective methods of translating research to practice (i.e., implementation science). My focus is understanding health inequities through community-engaged research with underserved and underrepresented populations. My experience in youth substance use and mental health implementation science has been in the contexts of large public-sector behavioral health organizations and rural community-based organizations. I have conducted empirical research in these diverse contexts such as the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division, Department of Education, the City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, the Boston Public Health Commission, and Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. Specifically, within Hawaiʻi, I have studied the implementation of a culturally grounded substance prevention program in rural Hawai'i schools, therapist predictors of evidence-based practice use, and large-scale dissemination strategies for health information. I am currently PI of a NIDA DP1 that seeks to establish community-led implementation strategies for a culturally grounded substance use prevention program for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander youth.

I was also co-PI of a Hawaiʻi SAMHSA system of care expansion award that focused on building infrastructure dedicated to quality improvement within the publicly funded youth mental health system. Within the City of Philadelphia, my research focused on developing cost-analysis metrics to help large systems choose treatments relative to their populations and designing implementation strategies to promote sustainment of evidence based practice within the system. These experiences have afforded me the insight to understand the unique nuances of community based implementation and have expanded my program of research to understand outer contexts, such as policies and organizational structures that aid in successful implementation. These outer contexts also span various time periods, and I actively acknowledge the historical and intergenerational trauma suffered by the Indigenous people of Hawaiʻi after the illegal overthrow of their monarchy.

Clinically, I have trained and delivered substance use and mental health services in federally qualified and Native Hawaiian health centers in rural areas like Waimānalo and Molokaʻi. Furthermore, being a fourth-generation daughter of Japanese and Okinawan immigrants to Hawaiʻi, I have a deep appreciation of understanding diversity, culture, and contexts as they apply to implementation. Growing up in a rural town in Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi has afforded me an insightful lens in the complexities of socioeconomic and cultural barriers that may impede successful implementation of youth psychosocial substance and mental health interventions in similar communities.

Recent Global Health Projects

I am currently partnering with a research group at the Okinawan Institute of Science and Technology to increase the spread of their app based parenting intervention for caregivers with ADHD youth. We have submitted an application to the Penn Global Health research and engagement fund to further our work together.

Another area of research is my work in Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations that spans further to Pacifika. Our work examines substance use prevention in various rurally geographic and disparate regions to promote health and well-being

Select Publications

Palafu, T.*, Carreira Ching, D.L.*, Goebert, D., Okamura, K.H., Rehuher, D., Riley, L., Suʻesuʻe, A., & Yoshizumi-Kim, N.* (2025). Pacific Islander Youth Mental Health in the United States. In N. Liu (Ed.), For the next generation: Mental health in Asian American & Pacific Islander youth (XX ed., pp. X-X). John Wiley & Sons.

Carreira Ching, D. L.*, Daniels, S., Freitas, J. M. N., Goebert, D., Kahili-Heede, M., Keaulana, S., Okamura, K. H., Palafu, T.*, Riley, L., & Yoshizumi-Kim, N.* (2025). Hoʻokō: Uplifting kānaka ʻōiwi youth mental health. In N.Liu (Ed.), For the next generation: Mental health in Asian American & Pacific Islander youth (XX ed., pp. X-X). John Wiley & Sons.

Last Updated: 17 April 2026