Deborah Johnson, DNP, RN, NP
Professor Emeritus
Community Health Systems
School of Nursing

Dr. Johnson's clinical activities involve providing PMHNP behavioral health services to children and adolescents in underserved areas. She has an active faculty practice in community-based psychiatric services, expanding clinical training partners in child psychiatry for the PMHNP program.

As an expert in child/adolescent/family behavioral health, Dr. Johnson's clinical practice and leadership in this area are central to the program's ability to prepare our students in psychiatric mental health across the lifespan. Since developing the School of Nursing’s first community-based psychiatric faculty practice agreement, she has strategically expanded PMHNP clinical resources by developing three new faculty practices with child/adolescent/transitional age youth that provide training opportunities for UCSF students.

Within six months of accepting a faculty appointment, Dr. Johnson led the development of a new faculty practice and clinical training site in Placer County, expanding much-needed pediatric, adolescent, and transitional-age youth (TAY) clinical training opportunities for PMHNP students. Increasing child/adolescent mental health clinical placements is important to the success of the PMHNP program since national PMHNP certification requires clinical training with individuals across the lifespan.

The second faculty practice site Dr. Johnson established was at Mills College Counseling and Psychological Service. Mills College sought this relationship to expand mental health services to include psychiatric diagnosis and medication management. Initiating this new role required negotiation to develop new standardized procedures with the consulting psychiatrist as well as the development of new clinical tools and processes. The PMHNP role focuses on diagnosing and treating emergent psychiatric disorders in transition age youth and adults.

Building upon four years of strategic partnership, in 2020 Dr. Johnson developed a professional service agreement (PSA) with an outpatient clinic that has grown in commitment to training PMHNP students. Her role as a faculty PMHNP includes consultation, patient care, and teaching. Under her leadership, the agency is expanding faculty practice using both in-clinic and telepsychiatry, addressing one of the SON strategic planning imperatives.

SERVICE ACTIVITIES Dr. Johnson has served in leadership positions in Community Health Systems (CHS) Department, School of Nursing (SON), UCSF Campus and UC Systemwide. In CHS, she has served on Merit and Promotion and on the faculty search committees for both the MS and DNP programs. At the SON level, she chaired the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Program Council throughout the preparation and successful completion of CCNE accreditation and served on the SON Educational Policy committee. Prior to chairing the committee, she served as a member since 2017, developing and approving curriculum for the first DNP program launched at a UC campus. Dr. Johnson's UCSF campus service includes chairing the Educational Policy Committee until 2019, after serving as the SON representative since 2014. From 2018-2019, she was appointed to the University-wide Academic Senate as the UCSF representative for University Committee on Education Policy, as past chair of the UCSF Educational Policy Committee. Since 2019, she has served as co-director of the UC multi-campus postmasters PMHNP program and director of recruitment and development.

Dr. Johnson's most recent external service is through her current role as president of the International Society of Psychiatric Nurses (ISPN). ISPN is a global organization whose mission is ‘to support advanced-practice psychiatric-mental health nurses in promoting mental health care, literacy, and policy worldwide.’ As president of ISPN, she leads the board in addressing the national and international challenges related to mental health resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. ISPN is adapting to the changing world environment, maintaining a strong and clear global focus on social determinants of health including mental health for all. ISPN is incorporating technological resources to sustain meetings during COVID-19, while enhancing regionalization of the international organization. Dr. Johnson leads ongoing discourse around international partnerships to address global behavioral health needs, modeled after ISPN’s memorandum of understanding with Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice.

As the result of her national and international presentations on teleprecepting, Dr. Johnson was invited to join a universal telehealth toolkit collaborative comprised of 59 faculty from 39 universities in 22 US states and funded through HRSA Advances in Nursing Education and Workforce (ANEW). She contributes to national content development on teleprecepting for a telehealth toolkit. This is particularly salient with COVID-19 and the need to transition to remote solutions for educating behavioral health clinicians. Dr. Johnson initiated collaboration between PLU, MUSC and USCF, and under her leadership, the universities have created national recommendations for teleprecepting and disseminated results of three pilot projects through lectures at NONPF and ISPN.

Through all of these activities, Dr. Johnson seeks to impact nursing education and impact upon the health outcomes of the regional, national and international populations that our students and graduates serve.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO DIVERSITY Dr. Johnson's contributions to diversity are rooted in clinical, teaching, research, and leadership initiatives of accessible child/ adolescent psychiatry, public mental health, adverse childhood events, trauma-informed care, resilience, LGBTQ youth, and rural/underserved community access to psychiatry using telehealth and teleprecepting,

As the project director for OSHPD PMHNP Stipend Program (#14-5463 and #15-8275) since 2014, she has overseen more than 100 student stipend awards. She is responsible for ensuring that the PMHNP program reaches out to diverse individuals and those having lived experience with mental illness to encourage and supports their application and successful completion of the program. She ensures that a diverse awards committee comprised of diverse community and faculty review each stipend applications. When stipend recipients graduate, she supports their process of identifying employment positions that will serve under-represented communities and underserved individuals with mental illness.

In clinical practice, Dr. Johnson serves children, adolescents and families with mental health needs in an under-represented county and trains PMHNP interns to do the same, emphasizing the importance of serving diverse patient populations where the need is greatest or access to psychiatric care is most lacking.

TEACHING SUMMARY As an innovative educator, Dr. Johnson leads the expansion of PMHNP practice across California through engagement of stakeholders, collaborative partnerships, and innovative program improvements. With my oversight of a state-funded stipend program and contribution to a HRSA-funded workforce development project, UCSF sets the pace for other California and national workforce expansion effort. This is critical, in light of the national shortage of psychiatric providers, particularly in rural and under-served areas. As a thought leader and activator, her commitment to the expansion of training into rural and under-served areas has led to new partnerships across our large state and to new creative strategies to prepare NP students to practice in their own communities.

Dr. Johnson is a content expert on child, adolescent and family psychiatry. In addition to teaching psychiatric specialty courses, she developed and taught Advance Health Policy and Advocacy for the DNP program.

In an initiative to increase California’s behavioral health care capacity, Dr. Johnson was appointed to co-direct the new UC Multicampus PMHNP postmasters certificate project which began in January 2021. The project was funded by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF)and involves collaboration with partners from UCD and UCLA.

• G. Collins-Bride, J. M. Saxe, R. Kaplan, and K. Duderstadt (Eds.). Clinical Guidelines for Advanced Practice Nursing, An Interprofessional Approach
  Intimate Partner Violence 2016 De Lisser, R. & Johnson, D.
• Sarah E. Boslaugh (Ed.) The Sage Encyclopedia of Pharmacology and Society
  Prescriptive Authority 2015 De Lisser, R. & Johnson, D.
• Andrew Scull (Ed.) Cultural Sociology of Mental Illness
  Nursing 2014 Johnson, D. & Walsh, E.
• Social and Spiritual Support and Spiritual Problem Solving: Protective Mechanisms Negotiating the Risks of Eating Disorders
  Social and Spiritual Support and Spiritual Problem Solving: Protective Mechanisms Negotiating the Risks of Eating Disorders 2003 Johnson, D.