Advisory Board

Alinne Barrera, PhD
Alinne is an English/Spanish-speaking California licensed clinical psychologist. Her scholarly work is focused on depression prevention, intervention adaptations, and the use of technology to disseminate perinatal mental health resources. Dr. Barrera is an expert trainer and consultant to agencies implementing the Mothers and Babies Course/Curso Mamás y Bebés (MB) which was recommended by the US Preventive Services Task Force as an evidence-based prevention intervention for high risk perinatal persons. Dr. Barrera has dedicated her research program to adapting and empirically testing internet and SMS versions of the MB (see www.eMB.health and www.babytextstudy.com).

Dr. Barrera completed her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley, her doctoral degree at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her predoctoral internship and NIMH-funded individual postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital. She is a Professor in the Clinical Psychology PhD Program at Palo Alto University and serves as Associate Director at the Institute for International Internet Interventions for Health (i4Health).

Megan Barthle-Herrera, Ph.D., PMH-C
Dr. Barthle-Herrera is a licensed psychologist and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida. She is head of the OCD, Anxiety, and Related Disorders outpatient clinic at UF Health Division of Psychology at Springhill 2, which provides Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with Exposure and Response Prevention (CBT-E/RP) on a weekly to daily frequency in the intensive outpatient program. Dr. Barthle-Herrera is a Certified Perinatal Mental Health Professional (PMH-C), as well as a Certified Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) Therapist and Certified PCIT Within Agency Trainer. Dr. Barthle-Herrera works in conjunction with the UF Health Women’s Clinics and Psychiatry divisions to provide collaborative treatment from an interdisciplinary team.

Alex Briscoe, LCSW
Alex was appointed director of the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency in 2009 where he led one of the state’s largest public health systems, overseeing health and hospital systems, public health, behavioral health, and environmental health departments with an annual budget of $700 million and 6,200 FTE contracted and civil service staff. Before joining the county, he was the director of the Chappell Hayes Health Center at McClymonds High School in West Oakland, a satellite outpatient center of Children’s Hospital and Research Center. Mr. Briscoe’s work has helped design the nexus of public health and public education. He has designed and administered a number of mental health and physical health programs and services in child serving systems, including home visiting programs, programs for medically fragile children, and clinical and development programs in child welfare, juvenile justice, and early childhood settings. Mr. Briscoe has served on the Alameda County First Five Commission, The Alameda Alliance, and The Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and The Uninsured, as well as a number of other public and private boards and commissions. Mr. Briscoe is a mental health practitioner specializing in adolescent services and youth development. He has advised or collaborated with a number of local and national foundations including The Atlantic Philanthropies, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The California Endowment, and most recently with Tipping Point Community. He has specialized in Medicaid policy and administration, emergency medical services, youth voice and crisis counseling, and safety net design and administration.

Nakeya T. Fields, LCSW, PPSE, Registered Play Therapist-Supervisor, Trauma Informed Yoga Therapist
Nakeya is a mental health entrepreneur, author, and speaker. She is an alumna of the University of Southern California where she received a BA in Communication, a Master's in Social Work and a Pupil Personnel Services Credential in School Social Work and Child Welfare & Attendance. Nakeya is also a Registered Play Therapist - Supervisor and a certified field instructor and clinical supervisor. Nakeya is a 200 HR TT Yoga instructor, certificated in trauma informed restorative yoga and is certified in Mini Yogis Yoga for Kids yoga. She is licensed by the Board of Behavioral Sciences as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the State of California. She is also a Community Based Doula/Perinatal Support Specialist that addresses transitional difficulties that come up for new and expecting mothers/families and has launched the MOMMY MATTERS initiative through her organizations that incorporates a mental health professional, resource/case manager and doula throughout pregnancy and postpartum.

She is the owner of Fields Family Counseling Services, which specializes in mental health services that serve the complete family unit. Nakeya is also the Founder, President and Chair of the Board for The Therapeutic Play Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to build a healthier, more resilient world for those in disadvantaged communities through empowerment, education and play, starting with the Mother. She is also the Director of The Feel Well Empowerment Center which offers wellness resources such as community workshops (chakra healing, acupuncture, parenting, restorative yoga), books, candles, and aromatherapy.

Further, Nakeya acts as a program development and staffing consultant to develop progressive health and wellness programs that incorporate creative modalities within educational, corporate and community driven organizations. She also provides in-service seminars and is available for book signings, expert panels, speaking engagements, and consultation.

Hendrée Jones, Ph.D.
Executive Director, UNC Horizons, and Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine; The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), Chapel Hill, North Carolina; joint appointments – Professor, Department of Psychology UNC-CH and Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Jones is a licensed psychologist and an internationally recognized expert in the development and examination of both behavioral and pharmacologic treatments for pregnant women and their children in risky life situations. In 2021 Expertscape ranked Dr. Jones as the number five expert in the world in opioid-related disorders and number four in the U.S. She is also the number one expert in the world in neonatal abstinence syndrome. She has received continuous National Institutes of Health funding since 1994 and has written more than 200 publications. Dr. Jones has also authored two books, one on treating patients for substance use disorders and the other on comprehensive care for women who are pregnant and have substance use disorders. She also has written multiple textbook chapters on the topic of pregnancy and addiction. Dr. Jones has co-authored multiple national and international guidelines on the topic of caring for pregnant and post-pregnant people with substance use disorders and their children including those published by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the American Society for Addiction Medicine. She also co-authored both the women’s and children’s section of the United Nations (UN)’ International Standards for the Treatment of Drug Use Disorders and the UN guidelines on prevention and treatment for girls and women. While winning multiple awards, most recently in 2020 Dr. Jones won the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) R. Brinkley Smithers and Distinguished Scientist Award. She is a consultant for the UN and the WHO and is a member of the NIH’s HEAL multidisciplinary working group. Dr. Jones leads or is involved in projects around the world focused on improving the lives of children, women, and families.

Kay Matthews
Kay Matthews is a Successful Business Woman, Motivator, Advocate and Mental Health & Wellness Advisor. Kay Matthews lives in Houston Texas and is the Founder of BabyCakes & Brunch and Shades of Blue Project which was started after delivering her daughter stillborn and experiencing maternal mental health issues. She has been a local community advocate in Houston for over 20 years and her organization BabyCakes & Brunch has been recognized by the Mayor and was given their own day in the City. As a very active community advocate Kay feels that helping others to reach their own goals is the best benefit of helping those she encounters. Kay is now actively teaching and speaking to women of all ages to help them better understand how important it is to help themselves before during and after childbirth. Helping them to realize that they are able to continue to live their dreams and still make life great against all odds. To Kay this is the most important aspect of the work she does with in the communities and it's the motivation that she uses to continue to educate communities worldwide.

Bidusha Neupane, MPH
Bidusha is a doctoral student and research assistant at the College of Health Sciences at Old Dominion University. She is currently working on projects related to breastfeeding among the Women, Infant, and Child (WIC) population. She has an MPH degree from Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China. Her research interest is perinatal mental health, and her scholarly work focuses on maternal health, breastfeeding, and service utilization. She has extensively worked with non-governmental organizations in rural Nepal in Mental health and Maternal, Neonatal, Infant, and Child Health (MNICH). She is passionate about working towards uplifting the mental and spiritual well-being of everyone, especially mothers and children. She believes a healthy pregnancy is crucial for both the mother and babies, while health is incomplete without mental and spiritual dimensions. Coming from a country with high maternal and infant mortality, Bidusha is committed to addressing these issues via culturally sensitive community-level interventions that can be implemented in resource-lacking settings around the globe.

Melanie Thomas, MD, MS
Melanie has held various roles at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and as faculty within the University of California, San Francisco Department of Psychiatry. Her primary focus is health services research and programmatic development in the area of perinatal mental health as a mechanism to interrupt the inter-generational transmission of stress and reduce health inequities. In addition to her current role as Director of the Solid Start Initiative, she has served as the Principal Investigator for several community-engaged research projects related to the development, implementation, and evaluation of mental health and other psychosocial services for pregnant women and families with children 0-3.

Dr. Thomas has been recognized as an expert in perinatal mental health through presentations at a variety of national conferences, including the American Public Health Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Congress on Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. Dr. Thomas is the Principal Investigator on a recent Research Engagement Award proposal to the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Brooke E. Tomblin, MPH
Director, Health Equity/Social Determinants of Health and Clinical Performance and Quality at Cigna. Brooke manages Cigna's collaborative strategy to improve the health of our under-represented and under-resourced customers and communities. Her responsibilities include raising awareness, leveraging data science to identify health disparities, and developing leadership and organizational capacity to close gaps in health care and health outcomes. Examples of projects she has led include: an initiative to reduce the gender disparity in cardiovascular disease management; interventions to eliminate disparities in breast and colorectal cancer screening for African-Americans and Hispanics; and the inclusion of a health equity metric in our value-based reimbursement contracts for hospitals. She has recently expanded her role to include leading an enterprise wide strategy to address social determinants of health as a means for driving more equitable care in local communities.

Prior to Cigna, Brooke worked for several commercial health plans that administer Medicaid and Medicare in the area of health education and cultural and linguistic services. She has extensive experience in research, quality management, program design and evaluation.

Ms. Tomblin received her Master in Public Health degree from Boston University, Boston, MA. She lives in Southern California.

Martine Wilson, M. Ed.
Martine has a background in Traditional Midwifery, Women’s Health, Women’s Studies, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Her research with McNair Scholars and Pathways Fellowship was centered on Maternal and Infant Health Disparities and creating access to culturally competent healthcare providers and resources.

Martine was born into a family of nurses and healers. She was destined to be a Wholistic healer and Midwife. In 2004, she started her pathway into midwifery and completed her doula training through DONA International in Jerusalem, Israel in 2009. She has served Refugee women, Black women and others with childbirth education, social justice, and community support services.

Martine worked as a Program Coordinator for California Black Women’s Health Project with Sister’s Mentally Mobilized Sister Circle in Sacramento county and surrounding areas.

She is passionate about increasing awareness of physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional health topics. She engages in advocacy and mobilization activities designed to prevent and reduce intergenerational trauma and stigma, isolation, and anxiety. Her advocacy is centered on creating a safe, affirming, and empowering space where Black women can organize and advocate for policies and system changes. She aims to honor, respect, and acknowledge the dignity and wisdom of all women and mothering parents.

Martine served as an intern with the United States Senator of California, Senator Kamala Harris, where she was blessed and honored to participate in the preparation of the Maternal Health Bill and other policies.

She is a graduate of the College of Education with a Masters of Art in Behavioral Science with a focus in Gender Equity at California State University Sacramento. Her future goals are to continue her research in health equity work at Stanford University, develop a maternal health and women’s wellness center and pass on the knowledge to the next generation to preserve the art of Traditional Wholistic Midwifery care.

Amanda Yeaton-Massey, MD, FACOG
Amanda Yeaton-Massey is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist with a passion for perinatal mental health. After her own experience with perinatal depression, Dr. Yeaton-Massey redirected her academic and clinical focus to increasing awareness and improving the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders in the perinatal period. Dr. Yeaton-Massey received her MD at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), then went on to complete a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology followed by a fellowship in Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Stanford University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Maternal-Fetal Medicine in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at UCSF and Medical Director of Perinatal Mental Health.