People
PHI is home to more than 100 project directors and principal investigators that are leading innovative public health projects and programs. Here are the biographies of two of these leaders.
Internship Program
Designed to foster opportunities for public health professionals of the future, PHI has developed an internship program for the summer of 2010. The program aims to provide interns with a structured learning environment that will enhance their education with practical experience. Click here to meet them.
Doug Polcin, Ed.D
Senior ScientistAlcohol Research Group
Douglas Polcin is a senior scientist at PHI's Alcohol Research Group (ARG) and an adjunct faculty member of the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology.
A licensed marriage and family therapist, Polcin develops new interventions and strategies to help people with addiction disorders. He draws from real-life experiences based on his many years in private practice and working in addiction and mental health treatment programs. Moving from treatment to research allows him to influence the field in ways beyond working with individual clients.
Currently, Polcin serves as PHI's principal investigator on four studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, including: "Intensive Motivational Interviewing for Methamphetamine Dependence" and "Measuring Confrontation During Recovery." Supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, he also recently completed a study entitled "An Evaluation of Sober Living Houses."
The methamphetamine dependence study will assess a new intervention: a therapy manual for using Motivational Enhancement Therapy over nine sessions to help people quit using methamphetamine. Motivational interviewing is a supportive style of counseling that encourages individuals to examine their reasons for using methamphetamine as well as reasons they might want to make changes.
"Unlike other types of addiction counseling, motivational interviewing combines supportive and directive strategies," says Polcin. "It allows clients to see how their behavior is affecting their lives, which helps lead them to develop a road map for change."
With methamphetamine use rapidly increasing and in some areas, such as the Western U.S., reaching epidemic proportions, Polcin believes it's time to test this promising interviewing manual over multiple sessions as a treatment for methamphetamine addiction. Motivational interviewing has been shown to be effective for alcohol addiction but hasn't been tested for methamphetamine addiction.
Polcin's other current study aims to identify the types of confrontation that are most effective in leading a person with a substance abuse problem to seek help and go into recovery.
His housing study confirmed that people who pair sober living housing with outpatient programs can maintain their sobriety and other improvements in their lives long after they leave treatment.
Polcin has worked as an addiction and mental health practitioner since 1979 and has conducted research on drug and alcohol problems for the past 16 years. He has also been an instructor for the Department of Psychology at John F. Kennedy University and the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Studies program of the University of California's Berkeley Extension.
Before joining ARG, Polcin was a research psychologist at San Francisco's Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, where he served as principal investigator.
To learn more about Polcin's work at ARG, visit our Programs page.
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Connie Chan Robison, MPH
DirectorCenter for Collaborative Planning
Connie Chan Robison is executive director of the Center for Collaborative Planning (CCP). The center advocates for health and social justice through work in community building, leadership development and grassroots advocacy.
Motivated by a desire to spur social change, Chan Robison uses her community engagement experiences and public health training to support diverse organizations and communities to achieve lasting community change.
Before joining CCP, Chan Robison worked as a community health educator at Kaiser Permanente and also at the county public health level and in the nonprofit sector, where she developed a deep understanding of the social factors that determine health.
"A lot of the experiences and perspectives that I bring (to CCP) are based on a broad definition of health—which includes health equity and social justice," says Chan Robison. "Such considerations expand our understanding of the social and environmental influences that impact health and raise important questions, like: 'What does poverty have to do with health?'"
Believing that communities hold the answers to their particular challenges, CCP helps communities mobilize their resources to achieve positive social change.
"It's not one size fits all," explains Chan Robison. "It's about figuring out how to leverage the assets and wisdom to find and implement solutions that help create healthy communities."
Currently, CCP is working with Sacramento County Alcohol and Drug Services on community-based prevention to decrease youth alcohol and substance abuse. CCP is providing technical assistance and training to two Sacramento communities to help them create locally based prevention projects that build community among youth and adults.
This year CCP celebrates the 15th anniversary of Women's Health Leadership (WHL), a program that focuses on strengthening the leadership capacity of women health leaders across California. Since 1994, WHL has graduated more than 350 women, cultivating a statewide network of emerging grassroots leaders dedicated to addressing health and social justice issues.
"Too often, our communities are barraged by stories and examples of what's not working, which has consequences on how our youth, families and communities view our ability to make change," says Chan Robison. "If we can also focus our attention on what's working, we have the potential to leverage those assets and strengths to amplify our impact."
To learn more about CCP, visit our Programs page.
