Amy E. West, Ph.D., ABPP
Co-Director, Mentored Career Development in Clinical and Translational Science (MCD-CTS/KL2) Training Program
SC CTSI Role
Dr. West co-directs the MCD-CTS/KL2 alongside Dr. Elizabeth Burner.
Contact Information
Professional Background
Dr. West is a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, Psychology, and Psychiatry & the Behavioral Sciences; Associate Director for Education, Research, and Mentorship; and Director of the CHLA Child Clinical and Pediatric Psychology Internship in the Departments of Pediatrics and Psychology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and USC Keck School of Medicine. In addition, she holds a secondary appointment as a Professor in the Department of Psychology at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.
She is a Board-Certified Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychologist and an intervention scientist with clinical and research interests in psychosocial interventions for the treatment of pediatric mood and anxiety disorders, including studying predictors and mechanisms of treatment response, and the application of psychosocial interventions to underserved urban populations.
Currently, Dr. West is a co-investigator and the director of CBT implementation for a large PCORI-funded clinical effectiveness trial for pediatric anxiety treatment in urban, underserved, predominantly Latinx youth and families. She is also a co-investigator for the CHLA site of the Adolescent Brain Development (ABCD) Study, a 21-site clinical research study funded by NIH that represents the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States. Finally, she is a co-investigator on several studies funded by DHHS/SAMHSA and focused on intervention development, cultural tailoring, and implementation of substance use prevention and treatment interventions for American Indian/Alaska Native youth and families in partnership with colleagues in the Department of Population and Health Sciences at USC.
Dr. West has been funded by NIMH, PCORI, SAMHSA, CA DHHS, and multiple private foundations for her clinical trial, effectiveness, and community-based participatory intervention research. She has mentored over 150 doctoral trainees, and over 60 as a primary research mentor, including as a sponsor on NIH-funded training grants, such as K-awards, T32s, and F31s.
Dr. West received a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University, her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia, and completed her pre-doctoral internship and post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School/Children's Hospital Boston. She spent 13 years on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago before coming to CHLA/USC in 2017.
Interests
I am a mom to two boys, aged 5 and 9, so life is busy shuttling the kids to various play dates, activities and lots and lots of club soccer. I've been vegan for 20 years and love to experiment with plant-based eating and cooking for my family. I also love to travel the globe, read mysteries, and go to dance and yoga classes.