Olga Acosta Price
Olga Acosta Price
Ph.D., M.A.
Associate Professor and Vice Chair
Full-time Faculty
School: Milken Institute School of Public Health
Department: Prevention and Community Health
Contact:
2175 K Street
Washington DC 20052
Olga Acosta Price is an Associate Professor in the Department of Prevention and Community Health. She is also Director of the Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, a national resource and technical assistance center committed to building effective school health programs.
A passionate advocate of school-based mental health services, Olga Acosta Price has dedicated her formal training in clinical psychology to improving the lives of young people. "My experiences working with children, youth and families have driven my desire to understand resilience and to approach our work together from a strength-based perspective," she says. Giving voice to the concerns of young people is an essential priority for her. "I thoroughly enjoy creating opportunities for youth to share their insights. They don't hesitate to tell those of us who develop systems of care that we are clueless about what the world is really like for them."
Prior to joining the faculty in 2006, Professor Price was director of the School Mental Health Program at the Department of Mental Health in Washington, DC, where she earned the Employee of the Year award. She was also an assistant professor at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine and served as associate director of the Center for School Mental Health Assistance, a national technical assistance center. In that latter capacity, she helped to promote the development of school-based mental health services across the country.
Access to Health Care
Behavioral Health
Community Health
Mental Health
Prevention
Program Evaluation
School Health
Underserved Populations
Bachelor of Arts (Psychology), Vassar College, 1990
Master of Arts (Psychology), State University of New York at Buffalo, 1995
Doctor of Philosophy (Clinical psychology), State University of New York at Buffalo, 1997
PubH 6535: Promotion of Mental Health
Dr. Price is past co-president and current board member of the D.C. Assembly on School-Based Health Care, a member of the DC Youth Suicide Prevention Coalition and the DC Safe Schools/Healthy Students Core Management Team, as well as an advisor to several DC government agencies involved in developing school health and mental health programs. She is a member of the Community Advisory Board of the DC-Baltimore Center for the Improvement of Child Health Disparities and the Health Services Advisory Committee for the Kennedy Institute for Home-Based Head Start Program. Dr. Price has also been appointed to the Citizens Review Panel for Montgomery County, Department of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Price's primary research activities have been in the area of school mental health, prevention, resilience, community violence, and program development and evaluation. She was principal investigator of a project to evaluate the impact of the School Mental Health Program in Washington, DC. and project director of an RWJF funded multi-site national program, Caring Across Communities, that implemented culturally responsive school-connected mental health services to children and youth from immigrant and refugee families. She is currently principal investigator of an initiative aimed at identifying and developing strategies for sustaining behavioral health prevention and promotion programs.