Denise A. Chavira
Denise Chavira, Professor of Psychology, received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD)/San Diego State University Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology. Dr. Chavira completed her pre-doctoral internship at Brown University and a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSD. Dr. Chavira joined UCLA’s Department of Psychology in 2012.
Dr. Chavira is the Director of the Culture and Anxiety Lab for Mental Health Advances (CALMA), whose mission is to reduce ethnic disparities in mental health by understanding factors that facilitate and inhibit appropriate utilization of mental health services, as well as improving both the detection and treatment of mental health problems in Latinx communities. Dr. Chavira’s research team is also examining how family environment and cultural factors such as acculturative stress, immigration, and discrimination influence anxiety and depression in US and foreign born Latinx families. These efforts will further inform potential adaptations of existing evidence-based practices to better meet the needs of children who have been historically underrepresented in treatment development research.
Dr. Chavira has been a recipient of the UCLA Diversity and Equity Inclusion Faculty Award for Community Service and Praxis, and the American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program Dalmas Taylor Distinguished Contributions Award (for research in racial and ethnic minority psychology). She has received multiple grants from the National Institute of Mental Health to examine barriers to service use in ethnic minorities, paraprofessional models of service delivery and digital mental health interventions for rural and Latinx youth with anxiety and depression.
