Bio: Linda Gask, M.B.Ch.B., a 2000-01 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy, is a consultant psychiatrist at the Guild Community Health Care Trust, which is affiliated with the University of Manchester's Department of Community Psychiatry, and a reader in psychiatry at the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre also at the University of Manchester. There she co-leads research on primary mental health care. Her research has encompassed a broad range of topics that includes the impact of training GPs to manage mental health problems, the evaluation of the impact of Total Purchasing on mental health care provision, tele-psychiatry, and the development of quality indicators for mental health in primary care settings. Gask also trains primary care physicians and other primary care workers in psychiatry. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Her Ph.D. and M.Sc. are also from the University of Edinburgh. Based at Group Health of Puget Sound, her Harkness Fellowship compares treatment and outcomes of mental health problems in primary care in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Placement: Group Health Cooperative
Mentors: Michael von Korff, Sc. D.; Edward Wagner, M.D., M.P.H.
Project: The Role of the Specialist in Improving the Quality of Care for Depression and Diabetes
Description: Gask sought to examine the role of specialists in facilitating quality improvement efforts for patients with diabetes or depression, and the appropriateness of specialists acting as agents of change in general. She also examined the optimum balance between primary and specialist care for managing depression and diabetes in the population. She conducted interviews with primary care physicians, mental health specialists, diabetologists, and other key players in a large managed care system.