Marina Tolou-Shams, PhD

Dr. Tolou-Shams is the Kilroy Realty Professor of Psychiatry and Vice Chair of Community Engagement, Outreach and Advocacy in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (DPBS) at UCSF. She is also Deputy Vice Chair for Research in the DPBS at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG). From 2015-2022, she served as Director of the UCSF Division of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (ICAP) at ZSFG and from 2006-2015 she served as Director of the Rhode Island Family Court (RIFC) Mental Health clinic which she started as a cross-system collaboration between Brown Medical School and the RIFC. Dr. Tolou-Shams received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 2004 from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is trained as a pediatric and forensic psychologist and has many years of clinical experience with assessing and treating underserved adolescents and their families. Her 20 years of research experience has broadly focused on developing and testing integrated mental health, substance use, sexual and reproductive health prevention and treatment interventions (at individual, family and systems-levels) for youth and families in contact with the legal and/or child welfare systems. Dr. Tolou-Shams currently directs the UCSF Juvenile (in)Justice Behavioral Health lab (www.jjbh.org) and is PI of several active NIH-funded trials aimed toward improving behavioral health services access and outcomes and reducing health disparities for these youth. Specific emphasis includes gender and trauma-responsive interventions for girls in the juvenile legal system, studying the impact of structural racism and discrimination on behavioral health outcomes and services utilization, and identifying ways to leverage technology to improve access to behavioral health care for system-involved youth and families.