Dr. Lancaster is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, Division of Pediatric Psychology at Michigan Medicine. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Kalamazoo College in 1997, and his Ph.D. in Child Clinical Psychology from Western Michigan University in 2006. His internship and post-doctoral training took place at the Munroe-Meyer Institute at the University of Nebraska Medical Center where he also served as a junior faculty member from 2008 through 2012. Dr. Lancaster is the director of the Psychology Internship in Pediatric Psychology and Integrated Behavioral Health and is the Director of the Integrated Behavioral Health Program (IBH) at Michigan Medicine.
The Integrated Behavioral Health program represents a joint effort between the Division of Pediatric Psychology and the Division of General Pediatrics to increase access to behavioral health treatment for children. All of Dr. Lancaster’s clinical activities take place within the IBH program where his practice focuses on providing co-located behavioral health services within the primary care pediatric settings. This integrated approach allows him to collaborate with primary care pediatricians to provide evidence-based treatments for a wide variety of behavioral health concerns that arise in primary care pediatric settings (e.g., sleep problems, toileting issues, ADHD problems, anxiety, depression and general behavior problems). Dr. Lancaster’s goal as the Director of the Integrated Behavioral Health Program is to increase access to behavioral health services for children in primary care and to train a primary care psychology workforce to address the unmet behavioral health needs of children in Michigan. Dr. Lancaster and his trainee’s research focuses on demonstrating how increased access to behavioral health services can improve clinical outcomes and be cost-effective for patients, insurers and clinicians. For example, he has conducted exploratory projects demonstrating how treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with an integrated approach in primary care can lead to improved outcomes, fewer medications and improved patient satisfaction compared to standard medical care. Dr. Lancaster aspires to provide quality, evidence-based, behavioral health services to all children in the state of Michigan. He is hoping to use the skills he learns through the CHRT Policy Fellowship to generate public policy support for the training of a qualified workforce to provide these services and to overcome reimbursement issues that impede the provision of integrated behavioral health services in pediatric primary care.