Mental Health & Aging Team

Program Director: Richard N. Jones, Sc.D. (email) 
Social Scientist: Frances Yang, Ph.D. (email)
Statistician: Douglas Tommet, M.S. (email) 

Richard N. Jones, Sc.D. is associate director of health policy and social research at the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Division of Gerontology. He joined IFAR in 1997 after completing training in psychiatric epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. He has experience in applying advanced biostatistical and psychometric techniques (item response theory, structural equation modeling) to research questions in public mental health. His research interests encompass all areas of the Mental Health & Aging research center, with a particular emphasis on successful cognitive aging and the role of cognitive or brain reserve in buffering the impact of insults on the aging brain. He is an expert methodologist, and collaborates with other centers at IFAR, especially the Aging Brain Center, Palliative Care program, and the Care & Quality research program. He is also a faculty member with the Columbia Center for Active Life of Minority Elders, one of the National Institutes on Aging Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR).  

Frances M. Yang, Ph.D., is a faculty member in the Mental Health and Aging research center and is also on faculty at the Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital's Department of Psychiatry. She completed her doctorate at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology in 2004. Among other research projects, Dr. Yang is principal investigator of a project to develop a culturally- and clinically-sensitive depression instrument to improve screening among minority older adults with cardiovascular disease. This project is supported by a young investigator grant from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). Dr. Yang's overall career goal is to improve the early detection of depression in minority older adults with chronic diseases. 

Douglas Tommet, M.S., is the statistician for the Aging & Mental Health research center. Mr. Tommet is a trained biostatistician with expertise in complex multivariate techniques, including item response theory, latent growth curve modeling, and structural equation modeling.