CRESST Director Li Cai to Collaborate on Newly Awarded Federal Grant to UCLA Health

September 9, 2024

An initiative led by the National Institute of Mental Health is now underway to find new measures to more accurately measure and compare the quality of the various mental health treatments. UCLA Health researchers were awarded a four-year, $2.1 million federal grant to study and test whether such a quality measure can be created and applied across all social groups in the United States. CRESST Director Li Cai is a collaborator on this award.

“This work builds on several decades of prior research in educational and psychological measurement and statistics that provided the technical foundations of fair, valid, and reliable assessments in K-12 education and behavioral sciences,” Li Cai says. “It will be equally effective and valid in tracking change as any other “objective” physiological measures such as blood cholesterol level. If successful, we can potentially achieve a similar degree of comparability, precision, and the ability to quantify uncertainty around effectiveness and meaningful change through patient-centered outcomes.”

View the announcement from UCLA Health to learn more about this exciting project.