About

Dawn Bounds, PhD, PMHNP-BC, FAAN, is an associate professor at UCI Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing. She has established herself as a leader and a changemaker in the field of youth mental health. She leads the Centering Youth & Families for Empowerment and Resilience (CYFER) Lab, where she mentors students to serve as health coaches for adversity-impacted youth and their caregivers through her community-engaged study, Garnering Resilience in Traumatized Youth and Families (GRIT). Bounds created the GRIT program for pediatric providers to refer their patients after screening for adverse childhood experiences, aiming to address Orange County’s crisis-level shortage of mental health care providers. Her research focuses on digital mental health promotion and the prevention of risk behaviors in adversity-impacted youth. Her extensive experience working with marginalized youth and their families in various settings fuels her passion to amplify youth voices in her health equity-focused research.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Business
• Medicine
• Developmental psychology
• Medical education
• Clinical psychology
• Psychiatry
• Knowledge management

Selected publications

• Sex Differences in Adversity and Risk for Future Alcohol Use in Youth in the ABCD Study

  Drug and Alcohol Dependence · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Clinical psychology
  DOI

• Building Trust in Mental Health Chatbots: Safety Metrics and LLM-Based Evaluation Tools

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024 · 4 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology

  Objective: This study aims to develop and validate an evaluation framework to ensure the safety and reliability of mental health chatbots, which are increasingly popular due to their accessibility, human-like interactions, and context-aware support. Materials and Methods: We created an evaluation framework with 100 benchmark questions and ideal responses, and five guideline questions for chatbot responses. This framework, validated by mental health experts, was tested on a GPT-3.5-turbo-based chatbot. Automated evaluation methods explored included large language model (LLM)-based scoring, an agentic approach using real-time data, and embedding models to compare chatbot responses against ground truth standards. Results: The results highlight the importance of guidelines and ground truth for improving LLM evaluation accuracy. The agentic method, dynamically accessing reliable information, demonstrated the best alignment with human assessments. Adherence to a standardized, expert-validated framework significantly enhanced chatbot response safety and reliability. Discussion: Our findings emphasize the need for comprehensive, expert-tailored safety evaluation metrics for mental health chatbots. While LLMs have significant potential, careful implementation is necessary to mitigate risks. The superior performance of the agentic approach underscores the importance of real-time data access in enhancing chatbot reliability. Conclusion: The study validated an evaluation framework for mental health chatbots, proving its effectiveness in improving safety and reliability. Future work should extend evaluations to accuracy, bias, empathy, and privacy to ensure holistic assessment and responsible integration into healthcare. Standardized evaluations will build trust among users and professionals, facilitating broader adoption and improved mental health support through technology.

  DOI

• Evaluation of Services for the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth: A Scoping Review

  Trauma Violence & Abuse · 2022 · 6 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Medical education

  Commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) of youth is a public health issue with multiple negative consequences. Despite the complexities and comprehensiveness of service needs for youth experiencing CSE, the evidence base of effective services and programs lags far behind. This scoping review seeks to identify the most up-to-date evidence on programs for youth experiencing CSE that have been evaluated and found to be effective. We conducted a scoping review of current literature, including peer-reviewed articles as well as gray literature using a scientific approach to identify programs and service provisions specifically focused on youth experiencing CSE and examine empirical evidence for their effectiveness. A comprehensive search of five databases was completed in September 2020 then updated in April 2021 to identify relevant publications from January 1, 2000 to present. Additional program mining was conducted on evaluations of programs mentioned in the search results. A total of 3,597 citations from the database searches were screened for title and abstract and 190 citations were included for full-text review. The search process yielded 11 eligible articles with one additional report found through program mining. Identified programs targeted youth, providers, and consumers of CSE. While scientific rigor was not high, all included studies reported positive outcomes. Evidence base for effective services and programs is sparse. While more programs and services are being developed, studies should use rigorous research designs to test the effectiveness of these programs and services. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sanghyuk S. Shin

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared

• Jia Li

  Dongbei University of Finance and Economics

  1 shared

• Iman Azimi

  University of California, Irvine

  1 shared

• Jacquelyne Sandoval

  University of Southern California

  1 shared

• Amir M. Rahmani

  Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences

  1 shared

• Robert M. McCarron

  1 shared

• Carly B. Dierkhising

  California State University Los Angeles

  1 shared

• Bo‐Kyung Elizabeth Kim

  University of Southern California

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• 2023 UCI Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate…
• 2023 Dean's Honoree Teaching Excellence Award
• 2023 UCI Excellence in Pedagogical Development Award Nominee
• 2022 Fellow, American Academy of Nursing
• 2022-2025 Betty Irene Moore Fellowship for Nurse Leaders and…

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