Blanche Wright, PhD, is a clinical psychologist who conceptualizes mental health as a public health issue. Informed by social determinants of health and ecological systems frameworks, her research is grounded in the understanding that youth mental health is influenced by family, school, healthcare, and policy contexts. Thus, she enacts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from clinical and cultural psychology, implementation science, and public health. Her equity-centered scholarship has the overarching goal to help close research to practice to policy gaps. Wright prioritizes community partnerships and scalability. She leverages quantitative and qualitative methodologies to investigate three streams of research:
- Identifying disparities in youth mental health status, and understanding strengths and stressors that shape the mental health of youth from low-income, ethnoracial minoritized and/or immigrant family backgrounds
- Strengthening youth and parent engagement within the delivery of evidence-based practices with specialized foci on Latinx/Latiné families and school- and community- based providers
- Exploring pathways to integrate research into the mental health policymaking process and optimizing government financing strategies to help sustain evidence-based practices in publicly-funded services.