Crystal Barksdale

Statistician
Substance Abuse Mental Health Services
Administration

Crystal L. Barksdale, Ph.D., MPH is a Statistician in the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (CBHSQ) at the HHS Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), as well as a licensed clinical psychologist and educator. Dr. Barksdale’s current role is in providing evaluation consultation and guidance and subject matter expertise related to various behavioral health evaluation projects sponsored by and conducted within SAMHSA. She is also a Faculty Associate in the Counseling and Human Services concentration area in the Johns Hopkins School of Education. Dr. Barksdale’s current work and research interests are focused on identifying and evaluating solutions to eliminate disparities in behavioral health, with a particular focus on the role of culturally and linguistically competency. Prior to working at SAMHSA, she led implementation and evaluation efforts on the HHS Office of Minority Health’s National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care (National CLAS Standards), provided training and technical assistance to health and health care organizations related to cultural and linguistic competency, and managed cultural and linguistic competency program development and evaluation efforts. She has also worked on projects that have explored racial disparities and disproportionality in child serving systems, such as the juvenile justice and public mental health systems, and that have identified culturally appropriate mental health interventions for at-risk youth and their families. Dr. Barksdale is keenly interested in translating research findings to inform health policies and practices, and evaluating the implementation of culturally and linguistically appropriate interventions and policies in the community through using advanced research methods.