Lydia Chwastiak is a Professor in the UW Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Global Health in the UW School of Public Health. She received her MD degree from the University of Pennsylvania, completed residencies in both internal medicine and psychiatry, and obtained research training through an NRSA-funded fellowship in psychiatry and primary care at the University of Washington. Over the past eighteen years, her research has focused on improving the care and outcomes of complex patients who have serious mental illness and co-morbid chronic medical conditions. She has authored or co-authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and has been the Principal Investigator or a co-Investigator on numerous (federally and non-federally) funded research projects to develop and implement integrated care interventions to improve outcomes among complex patients in low-resource settings.
Dr. Chwastiak has many years of experience as a psychiatric consultant in Washington State’s Mental Health Integration Program (MHIP), and co-led an innovative rotation related to implementation of collaborative care for psychiatry fellows in the UW Integrated Care Training Program. She is the Principal Investigator and co-Director of the SAMHSA-funded Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (NW-MHTTC), which aims to support the implementation of evidence-based practices for patients with serious mental illness across a variety of settings in HHS Region 10 (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington). She leads the training activities related to integrated care for the NW-MHTTC, which includes training of a broad workforce (psychiatrists, nurses, primary care providers, social workers) in both primary care community mental health settings.