Arlene Fink, Ph.D.

Biographical Information

Dr. Arlene Fink is an adjunct Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA. She a recognized expert in health services research, survey methodology, and program evaluation and has decades of research experience. In recent years, she has been concentrating her research activities on developing, implementing and evaluating programs to improve the health and mental health of vulnerable populations. For instance, she has been actively involved in studies to improve the quality of care for depressed, low-income patients and to understand the prescribing practices of physiatrists who care for the seriously mentally-ill. Dr. Fink is also concerned with the effects of alcohol use in women and older adults. She has been part of a group of researchers at RAND and UCLA who have developed and validated the only available screening and education system for to detect hazardous and harmful drinking. In addition, she has been interested in comparing men and women in their use of counseling for alcohol and other substance misuse. Most recently, Dr. Fink has been working with Dr. Bradley Stein to develop and evaluate programs to decrease symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome in children who have been exposed to violence and to set guidelines for schools to deal with the after effects on campus violence.

Dr. Fink has is on the Research and Policy Advisory Boards of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and an Advisor to UCLA's NIMH-sponsored Faculty Scholars Program and has worked with over 200 fellows in medicine and psychiatry to help them design, implement and report on their research projects. She is the author of over 120 articles and 13 books on program evaluation, effectiveness research and research design and methods.

Selected Publications

Fink A. Reviewing the Research Literature: From Paper to the Web. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1998

Litwin M, Hays R, Fink A. et al. The UCLA Prostate Cancer Index. Medical Care, 1998;36:1002-1012.

Barkin S, Fink A, Gelberg L. Predicting clinician injury prevention counseling for young children. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, 1999. 153:1226-1231.

Nguyen K, Fink A, and Beck JC, Higa J. The feasibility of using an alcohol screening and health education system with older primary care patients. Journal of the American Board of Family Practice, 2001. 14: 7-15.

Diamant AL., Brook RH, Fink A, and Gelberg L. Assessing Use of Primary Health Care Services by Very Low Income Adults in a Managed Care Program. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2001. 161:1222-7.

Roeloffs C and Fink A. Hazardous Drinking and Drug Misuse in Depressed Primary Care Patients, Psychiatry Services. 2001; 52:1251-1253.

Fink A, Beck JC and Wittrock M. Informing older adults about non-hazardous, hazardous and harmful alcohol use. Patient Education and Counseling, 2001, 45: 133-141.

Fink A, Tsai M., Hays RD, Moore AA, Morton SC, Spritzer K and Beck JC. Comparing the Alcohol-Related Problems Survey (ARPS) to Traditional Alcohol Screening Instruments in Elderly Outpatients. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 2002; 34: 55-78.

Diamant AL, Brook RH, Fink A, Gelberg L. Use of preventive services in a population of very low-income women. J Health Care Poor Underserved 2002;13(2):151-63.

Lambe S, Washington DL, Fink A, Herbst K, Liu H, Fosse JS, et al. Trends in the use and capacity of California's emergency departments, 1990-1999. Ann Emerg Med 2002;39(4):389-96.

Fink A, Morton SC, Beck JC, Hays R, Spritzer K, Oishi S, Tsai M and Moore AA. The Alcohol-Related Problems Survey: Identifying Hazardous and Harmful Drinking in Elderly Primary Care Patients, Journal of the American Geriatrics Association, in press, October 2002.

Fink A. A Survey Handbook. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, in press, 2003

Fink A. How to Prepare Survey Questions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, in press, 2003