Pamela Collins is the Bloomberg Centennial Professor and Chair of the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Through research, education, and practice, the department applies public health approaches to reduce the burden of mental disorders and associated determinants in populations around the world. Prior to this role, she was professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington (UW). There, she also served as executive director of I-TECH, a global health implementing center in the Department of Global Health that partners with ministries of health to bring public health interventions to scale through a multi-country network spanning 5 continents. She directed the UW Consortium for Global Mental Health and was associate director of the UW Behavioral Research Center for HIV.

Dr. Collins has served the mental health field in numerous capacities. She was director of the Office for Research on Disparities & Global Mental Health and the Office of Rural Mental Health Research at the National Institute of Mental Health (USA). Her leadership led to the launch of research initiatives to extend mental health services in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as research to reduce mental health disparities among diverse racial and ethnic groups and Indigenous communities in the United States.

She is currently a commissioner for the second Lancet Commission on adolescent health and wellbeing, she chairs the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on International Psychiatry and Global Health, she is lead editor of Global Mental Health Reforms in the journal, Psychiatric Services, and she co-chairs the scientific advisory board of Connecting Climate Minds, an initiative that aligns action at the intersection of climate change and mental health. Her research focuses on the intersections of mental health and HIV care in the US and sub-Saharan Africa, the effects of intersectional stigma on HIV risk and outcomes, and the mental health needs of urban adolescents in diverse settings. She and her colleagues recently published the article "Making Cities Mental Health Friendly for Adolescents and Young Adults" in Nature.

Dr. Collins completed her medical training at Weill Cornell University Medical College; her residency training and post residency fellowship at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute; and she received fellowship training in cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She graduated from the Mailman School of Public Health with a master’s in public health and joined the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University upon completion of her training.

Dr. Collins enjoys urban hiking, is an avid reader, and an improv amateur.