Dr. Roya Ijadi-Maghsoodi is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence in the UCLA Division of Population Behavioral Health, an Associate Research Director of the UCLA/VA Center of Excellence on Veteran Resilience and Recovery, and an Affiliate Investigator at the Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation & Policy within the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. A child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist, Dr. Ijadi-Maghsoodi is dedicated to addressing social and mental health inequities among under-resourced and minoritized youth, families, and adults, particularly those experiencing homelessness. She received an AACAP NIDA K12 award to adapt and deliver a family resilience intervention for homeless-experienced families in Los Angeles County, conducts community-partnered research evaluating school-based mental health interventions, and has served as an investigator on PCORI-, NIH-, and foundation-funded studies. Dr. Ijadi-Maghsoodi is an attending psychiatrist in the VA Women and Gender Related Psychiatry Clinic, co-directs the VA Family Resilience Clinic, and co-founded and co-directs the UCLA Psychiatry Asylum Clinic. She has received the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award and a departmental Outstanding Faculty Housestaff Teaching Award. In her free time in Los Angeles, she enjoys beach outings and hikes with her family, and walks with her dog.
Dennis Dacarett Galeano, MD MPH is a Health Sciences Assistant Clinical Professor within the Adult Division of the UCLA Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences. In addition to his work as a teaching hospitalist and attending in the PHP/IOP at Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, he works outpatient in a variety of specialized services for underserved and at-risk patient populations, including the health system’s Homeless Healthcare Collaborative, the Aftercare Research Program for First-Episode Psychosis, the Spanish Speaking Psychosocial Clinic, and the Division of Population Behavioral Health’s EMPWR Program serving the LGBTQ+ community. Outside of clinical care, he serves on the department’s Mid-Wilshire Health Equity and Community Partnerships Committee and teaches in the medical school on ethics, humanities, structural racism & health equity. Dr. Galeano joined the clinical faculty after completing his residency at UCLA-Semel, where he served as one of the program’s Chief Residents and graduated with concentrations in education and community psychiatry. Before moving to Los Angeles, he earned his medical degree on the east coast as part of the Humanities and Medicine program at Mount Sinai, where he was named a Human Rights and Social Justice Scholar and awarded the Irwin Gelernt, MD Award for Leadership and Service to the Community. In addition to his medical degree, he obtained his Bachelor’s in Anthropology and Latin American & Caribbean Studies from Columbia as a John Jay National Scholar and pursued further graduate studies in Health Policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, where he was honored to be an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Fellow. He is dually board certified in psychiatry and in public and community psychiatry through the American Association of Community Psychiatrists. In Los Angeles, you’re likely to catch him dancing, enjoying a concert, walking his dog or watching a movie with his partner.
Dr. Sarah Starks is a mental health services researcher with a focus on healthcare outcomes research and health policy for individuals with serious mental illness. She received her undergraduate degree in Public Policy from Stanford in 2001 and her Ph.D. in Health Services from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health in 2012. She has worked on NIMH-funded and county- contracted client outcomes evaluations in collaboration with DMH since 2006, including studies related to Full Service Partnerships, Assisted Outpatient Treatment, and the use of multi-agency linked county data to study DMH clients’ experiences with incarceration and homelessness. As a past teaching assistant and lab instructor for the core health services research methods courses she supported PhD students and postdoctoral fellows in learning research methods, developing their own research proposals, and planning, carrying out, and interpreting data analyses. She has experience in writing and submitting NIH grants, DMH contract applications, human subjects research protocols (UCLA Institutional Review Board and DMH Human Subjects Research Committee), and requests to the UCLA Technology Development Group to negotiate data use agreements between UCLA and DMH. Sarah lives in Santa Monica with her husband and two teenage daughters. When they aren’t busy with school and extracurricular activities, they enjoy spending time at the beach, camping, exploring LA, going on road trips, and visiting family.
Dr. Katherine Smith-White is a board-certified psychiatrist in General Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Addiction Medicine, with additional certification in Perinatal Mental Health. After completing a BA in French at UC Berkeley, she earned her MD at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She then completed her residency and fellowship at LAC/USC (now LA General Hospital) and has 18 years of experience working in the Los Angeles County mental health system.
Currently, she serves as Associate Medical Director–Academic Liaison for the Department of Mental Health. She has held leadership roles including Interim Associate Medical Director of Health Access Integration and Associate Medical Director of Child Psychiatry. Dr. Smith-White has extensive experience treating diverse populations with severe mental illness across multiple settings, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, and working with trainees from various health professions. Fluent in French and competent in Spanish, she is committed to serving individuals and families from varied cultural backgrounds, including those affected by trauma and child welfare involvement, and actively engages in community mental health education and child advocacy efforts.
She is a current member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and a recent member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Political Action Committee Child Advocacy Group.
Dr. Enrico Castillo was the Founder of the UCLA Public and Community Psychiatry Fellowship. From 2017 to 2025, he was an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in the Center for Social Medicine in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. As a medical educator, former Associate Director for Residency Education, and UCLA’s former faculty lead for community psychiatry education, he developed nationally recognized residency curricula and a career enrichment pathway to help train the next generation of leaders in public service (www.uclacgp.com). Dr. Castillo is dually board certified in psychiatry (ABPN) and in public and community psychiatry (American Association of Community Psychiatrists). He received his MD with a concentration in underserved populations from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and completed his residency and community psychiatry clinical fellowship at Columbia University, focusing on care for unhoused populations. From 2015 to 2021, he served as a psychiatrist within the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. As a researcher and UCLA faculty member, he has led NIMH K23 and R34 projects on homelessness and incarceration experienced by individuals with serious mental illness. For his work in research, medical education, and leadership, he has received two departmental teaching awards, a national teaching award from the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the APA Jeanne Spurlock Minority Fellowship Achievement Award, and the UCLA Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award.