Daniel Eisenberg is is an Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan. He completed a BA and PhD in Economics at Stanford University and a postdoctoral traineeship in mental health services and policy research at UC-Berkeley. His broad research goal is to improve understanding of how to invest effectively and efficiently in the mental health of young people. In recognition of his early career research, in 2010 he was awarded the Thompson Prize for Young Investigators by the Association of University Programs in Health Administration.
Dr. Eisenberg is involved in several studies on mental health problems and help-seeking behaviors of college students. In the Healthy Minds Study (www.healthymindsstudy.net) he is collecting annual national survey data on mental health symptoms, service use, and related factors. The descriptive data from that study have helped motivate and inform more narrowly focused studies, including: 1) a study of how peers influence each other's mental health and related factors, using the natural experiment of quasi-randomly assigned college roommates (funded by the WT Grant Foundation, PI: Daniel Eisenberg); (2) a randomized trial at 33 college campuses to evaluate the effectiveness of Mental Health First Aid training for resident advisors (RAs) (funded by a NIMH RC1 grant, co-PIs: Daniel Eisenberg and Nicole Speer); and (3) eBridge to mental health, a project to develop and test an innovative online intervention to increase linkage to treatment among college students with elevated suicide risk (funded by a NIMH R34 grant, PI: Cheryl King.
Toben Nelson, Sc.D.
Toben F. Nelson, Sc.D. is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health where he is a primary faculty member in the Alcohol Epidemiology Program and Tobacco Policy Research Program and continues to co-Direct the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS). Before joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota Dr. Nelson held research appointments at the Harvard Prevention Research Center, the Harvard Injury Control Center and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Physical Education from Hamline University, a Master of Science degree in Kinesiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and doctorate in Public Health from Harvard University. Dr. Nelson has published research on the etiology of, and evaluation of interventions for, public health challenges related to substance use, obesity prevention, and motor vehicle safety. In 2008 his research was recognized by Thomson-Reuters as among the most highly cited scientific studies in the past decade on the topic underage and college student drinking according to their Essential Science Indicators and his article in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drug summarizing findings from the CAS (with Henry Wechsler) is among the most highly cited articles of 2008.