Olga Acosta Price

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 has helped build a critical bridge between public health, mental health, K-12 education, and community advocacy efforts to advance youth well-being in communities across the United States, earning her recognition as a national leader in school and public mental health. She has been an active member of many task forces, advisory boards, review panels, coalitions, collaboratives, and committees addressing or helping to inform solutions for a variety of significant public health issues impacting youth (such as suicide, substance use, and community violence). She has served as a subject-matter expert for at least 10 national/federal initiatives, as well as for over 20 local/regional committees, in which she held leadership roles to promote the translation of evidence into practice and to enact significant policy reforms. Most notably, in 2017, Dr. Price was appointed by Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to co-chair the DC Task Force on School Mental Health to design a citywide plan directing the expansion of school mental health to all DC public schools, and that established the Coordinating Council to oversee a large publicly funded investment.

Dr. Price was invited to be on two committees of the National Academies; as a member of a consensus study, Use of Economic Evidence to Inform Investments in Children, Youth, and Families, through the Institute of Medicine (IOM) & National Research Council (NRC), as well as the steering committee of the National Academies of Education (NAEd), called Addressing Educational Inequities in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic Project. She participated on expert panels hosted by the CDC, particularly for the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH), served on a Technical Advisory Committee for the CDC’s School Health Guidelines to Prevent Unintentional Injuries and Violence, and was a member of a review panel for DASH on the development of a school mental health Technical Package on evidence-based strategies for increasing mental well-being and resiliency of U.S. students. To advance the implementation of culturally responsive evidence-based mental health practices across the country, she was a trusted advisor to the National Hispanic and Latino Mental Health Transformation Center (MHTTC) for three years and is now a national advisor to the newly established federally funded National Hispanic and Latino Behavioral Health Center of Excellence. One of the most long-standing roles she held was as a member, and over the last 8 years as board chair, of the board of directors of the Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color, whose mission is to advance the social-emotional, cultural, and academic development of boys and young men of color. Her service and influence also extend to funders and sponsors of her research, where she has helped shape the grant-making priorities for philanthropies such as the Robert Wood Johnson, Bainum Family, and JW and AS Marriott Foundations.

• Center for Health and Health Care in Schools
• Prevention Research Center

Dr. Price's primary research activities have involved the development of comprehensive school behavioral health systems, child and adolescent mental health programs, school-connected prevention and early intervention approaches, community-engaged strategies, and school-community coalition building. The overarching research question that connects her work centers on how K-12 schools can be designed to promote health and well-being and accelerate learning for all children. Her portfolio of work addresses a number of gaps in the research, such as, 1) how best to center youth/family voice in the design, implementation, and evaluation of school mental health, 2) what school processes, practices, policies can be tailored to support healthy development and how they can be improved, particularly for poor youth, youth of color and marginalized youth, and 3) how school-community partnerships can sustainably advance equity.

Consistent with the principles underlying community-based participatory research, Dr. Price conducts research that uses qualitative and mixed-methods approaches and meaningfully involves community collaborators in action research to maximize impact and reduce disparities in vulnerable communities. Her publications, reports, and consultations have inspired decision-makers across sectors to champion school, district, local, and state-level improvements to enhance student well-being, learning, and healthy development. Her research advances the integration, collaboration, and innovation needed to sustain effective systems of care in the school health and youth mental health fields.