Frances Lynch, PhD, MSPH, is a health economist whose research focuses on the organization and financing of care for people with mental health and substance abuse conditions. Dr. Lynch has extensive experience conducting economic evaluations of complex behavioral interventions including cognitive behavioral interventions for depression prevention, eating disorders, and anxiety disorders.

Her work has particularly focused on mental health and developmental conditions in children. Dr. Lynch recently completed studies examining service use and cost for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, a study evaluating an intensive prevention intervention for preschool children in foster care, and a study evaluating a school-based intervention for young foster children.

Dr. Lynch has been the principal investigator on several grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She recently completed a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health that developed an instrument to measure the costs borne by families with children who have mental health and developmental conditions. Dr. Lynch has also conducted methodological research on quality of life in mental health conditions.

Dr. Lynch received her PhD in health economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, where she was the recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health fellowship. Previously she was a researcher at the Center for the Organization and Financing of Care for the Severely Mentally Ill at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Lynch also holds a Master of Science degree in public health policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.