Erica A. Abel, PhD

Dr. Abel is clinical psychologist, and an informaticist. Dr. Abel is a clinical psychologist with the VHA’s National Telemental Health Center’s Bipolar Disorder Telehealth (BDTH) program. She provides psychological treatment of Veterans with co-morbid medical and mental health issues, especially known or suspected bipolar disorder. The BDTH team provides services at multiple VHA sites across the United States. In her capacity as a clinical psychologist, she draw upon her training in evidenced based practices including Life Goals Collaborative Care (LGCC) for bipolar disorder and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Depression and psychodynamic theories and approaches

In her research, she collaborates with health services researchers across a variety of disciplines, and has worked on a variety of local, regional and national projects with researchers and operational partners who want to address specific research questions or operational concerns. Her clinical experience, knowledge and data expertise helps bridge the gap between VHA administrative and clinical data and the researchers’ or operational partners’ respective focus. She uses informatics skills and leverage her clinical knowledge to help the project leaders meet their goals by providing guidance about how to define clearly the criteria they would like to use to identify cohorts of VHA patients and their relevant medical or mental comorbidities, medications and outcomes using data from the VHA’s electronic medical record. Dr. Abel helps project leaders understand the nuances and challenges inherent in using clinical data for research or operational purposes, and she retrieves data/builds cohorts for them.

Dr. Abel joined VHA in 2010 following a career in investment banking technology and finance . Dr. Abel completed two postdoctoral fellowships at VA Connecticut Healthcare System (VA CT) both with the Pain Research, Informatics, Multimorbidities, and Education (PRIME) Center: one in pain research and one in medical informatics. Dr. Abel has been selected twice as a VHA HSR&D funded Researcher and Evaluator in Residence (REiR) . First, in 2019 working on projects sponsored by teh VHA Integrated Care Coordination Initiative (Office of Nursing Services and Social Work ) and then in 2020-2021 with the VHA Office of Emergency Medicine.