Larke Nahme Huang, Ph.D., a licensed clinical-community psychologist, is a Senior Advisor in the Administrator’s Office of Policy Planning and Innovation at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this position she provides leadership on national policy for mental health and substance use issues for children, adolescents and families and leads the Administrator’s strategic initiative on Trauma and Justice. She is also the Director of SAMHSA’s Office of Behavioral Health Equity which was legislated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (health reform). In 2009, she did a six months leadership exchange at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where she was the Senior Advisor on Mental Health.
For the past 25 years, Dr. Huang has worked at the interface of practice, research and policy. She has assumed multiple leadership roles dedicated to improving the lives of children, families and communities. She has been a community mental health practitioner, a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley and Georgetown University, and a research director at the American Institutes for Research. She has worked with states and communities to build systems of care for children with serious emotional and behavioral disorders. She has developed programs for underserved, culturally and linguistically diverse populations, evaluated community-based programs, and authored books and articles on behavioral health. Recent publications include: Children of Color: Psychological Interventions with Culturally Diverse Youth; Transforming Mental Health Care for Children and Their Families; Advancing Efforts to Improve Children’s Mental Health in America: A Commentary; The Influence of Race and Ethnicity on Psychiatric Diagnoses and Clinical Characteristics of Children and Adolescents in Children’s Service; and Co-Occurring Disorders of Adolescents in Primary Care: Closing the Gaps.
In 2003, Dr. Huang served as an appointed Commissioner on the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. She was a member of the Carter Center Mental Health Board, the APA Committee on Children, Youth and Families, the Advisory Committee for the APA Minority Fellowship Program, and a founding board member of the National Asian American/Pacific Islander Mental Health Association, and the National Alliance of Multi-Ethnic Behavioral Health Associations.
Dr. Huang recently received the following honors: The American Psychological Association, Nicholas Hobbs Award for Children’s Mental Health, 2013; Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest, American Psychological Association, 2007; Dr. James Jones Lifetime Achievement Award, APA, 2007; Outstanding Psychologist of the Year, National Alliance of the Mentally Ill (NAMI), 2005; Presidential Citation, APA, 2011 and 2004; Distinguished Contributions Award, Asian American Psychological Association, 2004; Champion for Children’s Mental Health Needs, Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, 2003.
She received her doctorate from Yale University.
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