Katherine (Kate) Elkington, PhD, is a NYS licensed clinical psychologist and a Professor of Medical Psychology, in Psychiatry at Columbia University, a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and director of the Center for Behavioral Health and Youth Justice, within the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Dr. Elkington has over 15 years of research experience in criminal and juvenile legal settings, with expertise in documenting and understanding correlates of mental illness, substance use/disorders and HIV risk behaviors in highly vulnerable youth and using these data to (i) develop and implement prevention programming, and (ii) understand and address multi-level barriers to treatment access for legal system-involved individuals. Most recently, her work has focused on the development and evaluation of implementation interventions to increase detection of behavioral health problems, including suicide risk, and to improve access to behavioral health and health services, of which a centerpiece is building cross-system relationships between justice/legal and community treatment systems. To that end, Dr. Elkington is currently the lead investigator on several large-scale, multi-site, NIH-funded implementation science research projects, and has served as the Principal Investigator or co-I on numerous NIH- and CDC-funded awards.

Her work has been published in leading psychiatric, health psychology, justice, and public health focused journals. She is a founding member of the Justice Involved Behavioral Health Work Group, at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, which seeks to bring together the voices and knowledge of researchers, clinicians, legal system, and policy leaders, and those with lived experience to improve the access to and quality of behavioral health care for those involved in the legal system. Dr. Elkington currently serves on the editorial board of Health & Justice and has also served on the boards of Youth and Society and Journal of Youth and Adolescence.