Research Team and Sponsors

Kimberly Hepner

Kimberly Hepner, Ph.D. is a Senior Behavioral Scientist and a licensed clinical psychologist at the RAND Corporation. Dr. Hepner’s research focuses on approaches to assess and improve quality of care for mental health and substance use problems. She is currently leading studies to assess the quality of care received by patients with alcohol misuse, PTSD, depression, co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, and traumatic brain injury. Dr. Hepner has extensive expertise in assessing quality of care for Veterans, service members and their families. In addition, she has conducted work to identify barriers and facilitators to delivering evidence based psychotherapy, increase feasibility of provider training in cognitive behavioral therapy using computer-based training, and implement and evaluate cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and substance abuse disorders. Hepner received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Arizona.

Carrie Farmer

Carrie Farmer, Ph.D. is a Senior Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation. She is leading several Department of Defense-funded projects to identify and evaluate programs and services addressing psychological health and traumatic brain injury among service members. She was a co-investigator on a congressionally mandated project to assess the quality of mental health care delivered by the Veterans Health Administration and has worked on numerous other projects related to the health and well-being of veterans and service members. Dr. Farmer has expertise in the quality of mental health care, including the development of quality metrics. Her current and previous work involves analyses of mental health care quality in a variety of populations, including adult Medicaid beneficiaries and veterans. She holds a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard University.