Kimberly Roaten, PhD
Dr. Kimberly Roaten is a clinical psychologist with over a decade of experience in community healthcare and academic medicine. She received her Master of Science in Rehabilitation Counseling and her Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology degrees from UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Roaten is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern and the Director of Quality for Safety, Education and Implementation for the behavioral health service line at Parkland Health & Hospital System (PHHS). Dr. Roaten is an attending psychologist on the Consultation/Liaison Psychiatry team at Parkland Memorial Hospital where she supervises psychiatry and psychology trainees and is the designated psychologist for the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Burn services at Parkland.
Dr. Roaten’s primary research interest is suicide prevention. She created and leads the universal suicide screening program at PHHS though which more than 3 million screenings have been completed since 2015. The design of the program included the creation of a novel clinical decision support system integrated into the electronic health record in order to standardize and optimize patient care in a system with approximately two million patient encounters per year. Dr. Roaten and her team members have been invited to speak locally, nationally, and internationally about the success of the program and have consulted with numerous healthcare institutions around the country about strategies for implementing similar programs in other locations. The data generated from the program has produced new knowledge about suicide prevention and led to numerous peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Roaten serves as an ad-hoc reviewer for multiple peer-reviewed journals and is a member of multiple national committees related to patient care and safety. She is a Past President of the Dallas Psychological Association, a member of the Board of Trustees for the Texas Psychological Association, and a consultant on the Behavioral Health Subcommittee for the Texas Medical Association.
