The Center for Applied Research Solutions (CARS) has been leading change at the national, state, and local levels for more than 30 years. We are dedicated to fostering safer and healthier young people, families, and communities.
CARS believes in changing beliefs and actions by providing supportive learning experiences, promoting effective and evidence-based practices, and engaging community voices. Those shifts happen by collaborating with people where they are, including in neighborhoods, organizations, agencies, and systems. Together, through our shared work, we enhance collective effectiveness and impact.
CARS builds organizational, leadership, and workforce capacity to improve mental and behavioral health services and outcomes. We are passionate about connecting leaders and change makers with learnings from research, lived experience, and cultural and community expertise.
CARS is committed to social change and betterment by bridging research to practice.
Team Members
Andé Pena, MSW
she/her
CMHEP Role: TA Specialist
Andé Peña has spent over ten years working in diversion and re-entry services in California’s East Bay Area. As the Director of Diversion and Re-Entry Services at La Familia, a community-based organization, she, and a team of Peer Support Specialists designed and implemented reentry programs that served individuals impacted by incarceration, homelessness, and assigned a diagnosis of substance use disorder and/or serious mental illness. Before joining the CARS team, she served as the Treatment Court Manager through the Office of Collaborative Court Services for the Superior Court of California, in Alameda County. In this role, she worked with court leadership and eight dedicated Treatment Specialists to divert community members from the traditional criminal and family court systems into a collaborative court system and connecting them to mental health services and substance use treatment. She is currently completing her doctoral work, exploring the community cultural wealth of people impacted by incarceration.
Angela Brand
she/her
CMHEP Role: Field Manager
Angela Brand is an experienced professional with a history of work in the public and private sectors of the mental health care industry focused on programming, community engagement, advocacy, training and workforce development to support consumers, family members, youth, and communities. Her passion includes working with consumers, families and youth to support dynamic and meaningful involvement in all aspects and levels of decision making to develop systems that improve access to care through community based and recovery focused programs that are reflective of and responsive to the needs of the diverse populations. She is currently a Project Manager for the Center for Applied Research Solution. Prior to joining the team at CARS, she worked for NAMI California, Mental Health America California, the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission and United Advocates for Children and Families.
Her areas of special interest include peer support, trauma informed care, prevention, early intervention, and education. Her work is driven by a passion to support systems that improve access to care through community based and recovery focused programs that are reflective of and responsive to the needs of diverse populations. Ms. Brand holds a degree in Sociology from Arizona State University, with emphasis on how the intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender impact social justice issues.
Ayanna McGee, MPH, MHA
she/her
CMHEP Role: Associate Project Director
Ayanna McGee is the Associate Project Director for the Crisis and Recovery Enhancement (CARE) TA Center and Community Mental Health Equity Project (CMHEP) TA Center where she provides guidance and coordination over statewide workforce capacity initiatives that improve culturally responsive behavioral health practice. She has a broad base of experience in public health with expertise in program management, grant writing and administration, and evaluation. She has worked across public and nonprofit settings, focusing on youth and community development, food access, and basic health needs. While leading after school programs and community activities for youth in the City of Tracy, Ayanna interned with San Joaquin County Public Health Services supporting quality improvement within the STD/TB unit. After serving as a 2017 Health Equity Fellow for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health (OMH), Region 9, Ayanna transitioned into her role as Grants Coordinator for Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services where she supported the growth of several food access and family support programs for economically disadvantaged populations across Sacramento County. Additionally, Ayanna served as Development Co-Chair of the American Public Health Association – Student Assembly (APHA-SA) in 2021, receiving the Chair Citation Award.
Heliana Ramirez, Ph.D., LISW
she/her
CMHEP Role: Project Director
Heliana Ramirez is a licensed social worker with twenty years of experience related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in behavioral health care settings. From designing and facilitating clinical training programs addressing health disparities to implementing and evaluating behavioral health evidence-based and community-defined interventions with diverse communities, her work centers on the strengths and resiliencies of people most impacted by social determinants of health. Dr. Ramirez has worked with African American, Latinx, Native American, Asian Ancestry, Pacific Islander, LGBTQ+, Veteran, and justice involved communities addressing issues of trauma (i.e., racial, combat, and sexual trauma, and LGBTQ hate crimes), substance use, and recovery from intrusive thoughts, hallucinations, suicidal crises, sleep disturbance, sexual health problems, and feelings of depression, anxiety, and mania. As a researcher, she delights most in community based participatory research methods and democratized media production including VideoVoice (she produced The Camouflage Closet) and digital storytelling.
In addition to direct service, Dr. Ramirez has also supported cross-cultural clinical skill development with students and colleagues. As a graduate student, Heliana co-taught an Intergroup Dialogue course for Masters level social work students, preparing them to work with clients from various racial and ethnic groups, across religious and spiritual difference, sexual orientation, gender identities, and class. As an instructor, Dr. Ramirez led experiential activities regarding implicit bias and cultural humility. As Associate Project Director of the SAMHSA funded Pacific Southwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC), Dr. Ramirez designed and facilitated a series of diversity-focused professional development sessions for peer specialists, social workers, psychologists, and school mental health leaders entitled “Discussions that Matter in 2020.” This 3-month discussion series included didactic learning about systemic racism and racial health disparities amplified by COVID-19 and Affinity Group break out dialogues (i.e., Black, Latinx, Asian Ancestry, Middle Eastern, Native American, Pacific Islander, Mixed Race, and White Affinity Groups). As Director of the Crisis and Recovery Enhancement (CARE) TA Center, Dr. Ramirez organized a virtual conference “Listening, Learning, and Leading: Anti-racism in the California Crisis continuum of Care” and designed an Anti-racist Crisis Care Continuum and Justice Diversion Action Learning Event Series including workshops to help audiences apply learning to their work. At the Veterans Affairs, Dr. Ramirez founded an LGBT Veteran Care Coordinator Program, an LGBT Staff and Allies Special Emphasis Program and served on the national VA Office of Diversity and Inclusion LGBT Program where she co-authored the VA’s employment policy for gender transition at work.