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Robert N. Averbuch, MD
Alan J. Barnes, MD
Lewis R. Baxter, MD
Adriaan W. Bruijnzeel, PhD
Regina Bussing, MD
Josepha A. Cheong, MD
Wayne L. Creelman, MD
Douglas Davies, MD
Gary R. Geffken, PhD
Mark S. Gold, MD
William M. Greene, MD
Susan Hill, MSN, ARNP
Jon Hodgin, MD
Richard Holbert, MD
Jacqueline A. Hobbs, MD, PhD
Michelle Jacobs, MD
Mark H. Lewis, PhD
Yijun Liu, PhD
Daniel Logan, MD
Ross A. McElroy, Jr., MD
Lisa J. Merlo, PhD
Sylvia P. Montesinos, MD
Drake Morgan, PhD
Matthew L. Nguyen, MD
Andrew K. Ottens, PhD
John M. Petitto, MD
Teresa A. Pigott, MD
Krestin A. Radonovich, PhD
Jerzy Szlabowicz, MD, PhD
Scott A. Teitelbaum, MD
Herbert E. Ward, MD
Tonia Werner, MD
Kimberly White, MD
Regina Bussing, M.D., M.S.H.S.
Professor
Dr. Bussing, board certified in general psychiatry and in child and adolescent psychiatry, is a professor in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Florida. Dr. Bussing completed her residency and fellowship training at the University of Florida and obtained a Masters degree at the UCLA School of Public Health. Dr. Bussing received a career development award in Mental Health Services Research Training through the UCLA Faculty Scholar Program, and subsequently obtained research funding from the National Institute of Mental Health for her work on access to and quality care for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She received the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Schlosser Lewis Award for best published paper on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in the Academy’s journal in 1997.
Clinical Interests
Dr. Bussing’s major clinical interests include comprehensive treatment approaches to disruptive disorders of childhood, combining pharmacotherapy, parent training, clinical group therapies, and school interventions. Dr. Bussing enjoys treating the entire spectrum of child and adolescent disorders. Of special clinical interest is the comprehensive outpatient treatment of disruptive disorders of childhood, combining evidence-based pharmacological and psychosocial therapies. She adapted an established parent group intervention for ADHD, combining it with a child social skills group, into an 8-week manual-based program. Another related project has been the development of a school problem clinic in conjunction with our psychology services. This clinic provides multidisciplinary assessment of the various school problem children get referred for, with comprehensive treatment planning including medication regimens, behavioral interventions, and tutoring.
Research and Scholarly Interests
Dr. Bussing’s main research effort has been in the area of mental health services research for children and adolescents, with an emphasis on ADHD. Her studies have focused on access to care, barriers to care, quality of care, service use across sectors, and outcomes, using epidemiological sampling frames.
With the intention of better understanding inequities in access to care, Dr. Bussing has examined the help-seeking processes of parents whose children with ADHD were identified through our study through quantitative and qualitative research methods. She developed a method of coding qualitative data derived through our representative sampling frames that allows for subsequent quantitative analysis of the data, thereby overcoming one of the usual limitations of qualitative studies, namely very limited external validity. In our current study, we are also examining patterns of care across sectors (e.g. medical care, school services, self-care) and over time, developing new analytic techniques to model these complex relationships.
In conjunction with faculty from neuroscience Dr. Bussing has piloted the feasibility of using subjects identified through epidemiological sampling for imaging research. She was able to successfully recruit and scan 12 children with ADHD and compare them to a matched health control group, reproducing findings of cerebellar changes in ADHD reported by intramural NIMH researchers.
Another interest is intervention programs for very young children at high risk for ADHD and she has, in collaboration with Dr. Sheila Eyberg, developed an enhanced version of her parent-child interaction therapy for preschoolers. We are currently seeking funding to scientifically validate this new program before subjecting it to clinical trials research.
Dr. Bussing has collaborated with colleagues at UCLA in developing a proposal to study quality of care for ADHD in publicly funded programs. This proposal will develop quality of care parameters and provide benchmark information on the quality of care in managed care settings of this highly prevalent child psychiatric condition.
Through Dr. Bussing’s research, she has educated well over 50 undergraduate students in basic principles of services research, and has taught numerous graduate level students. She has also participated in summer research mentoring programs for promising minority students and has been sought out for dissertation research.
Educational Interests and Accomplishments
Dr. Bussing’s educational efforts have mainly focused on the division of child and adolescent psychiatry program and on her research graduate and undergraduate students. In her role as Training Director of the division, Dr. Bussing has revised our overall training curriculum. She participates directly in the teaching and coordinating of the contributions by other faculty members. Our didactic program is well rounded, well established, running smoothly and in a timely fashion. We conduct regular assessments of the didactic program by our trainees and keep the content updated to reflect scientific developments in the field. The faculty is well represented in the didactic program, bringing in the necessary diversity of expertise and interests to assure a valuable learning experience for the trainees.
Another important educational achievement was the successful accreditation of our program for the maximum time possible at our most recent RRC review. We revised our program manual in order to reflect recent changes in program requirements, and are well positioned to handle the next step: the internal review by the UF GME program in mid-cycle before the next RRC review.
On a more personal level, Dr. Bussing enjoys teaching a treatment modalities seminar that covers the breadth of treatments used in child and adolescent psychiatry. She has increased exposure to psychopharmacology, concepts of evidence-based medicine, and brought in nationally relevant materials, like the Surgeon Generals Report on mental health. She also developed a conjoint parent-child group therapy program that is part of our curriculum, and where trainees learn hands-on to conduct manual-based parent training and child social skills groups. Dr. Bussing provides individual supervision to general residents rotating in child psychiatry as well as child fellows, and provides clinical teaching in her role as clinic attending.
Leadership and Service
Dr. Bussing’s primary leadership role since 1999 has been as the division chief for child and adolescent psychiatry. The initial goals she set for the division included recruitment of key faculty positions, improving our clinical services and financial performance, advancing our national position through research contributions, and strengthening our training program by integrating our training positions in Gainesville and Jacksonville sites. Not foreseen initially, three additional critical goals have emerged: successful completion of a major divisional relocation, a structural reorganization of our outpatient clinic setting, and a reorganization of our autism and diabetes services.
We have been able to develop new specialty clinics and to attract increasing proportions of privately insured patients into our outpatient clinic. The division has developed an increasing presence at the national research level, with federal funding in place for two divisional faculty members, and a recently awarded development grant for autism research. We have also been successful in getting Gainesville funding for two positions traditionally funded via the Jacksonville campus, allowing us to place all 8 trainees in the same training sequence, alleviating RRC concerns about unequal training conditions and assuring our ongoing accreditation.
Selected Publications (since 2000)
Zima BT, Bussing R, Yang, Belin TR, Freeman, Forness SR: Behavior problems, academic skill delays and school failure among school-aged children in foster care: Relationship to placement characteristics. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 9:87-103, 2000
Zima BT, Bussing R, Yang X , Belin TR: Help-seeking steps and service use of children in foster care. Journal of Behavioral Health Services and Research, 27(3):271-85, 2000
Bussing R, Zima BT, Perwien AR: Self-esteem in special education children at high risk for ADHD: The role of psychosocial variables, disorder characteristics, and medication use. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 39(10):1260-9, 2000
Bussing R, Gary F: Practice Guidelines and Parental ADHD Treatment Evaluation: Friends or Foes? Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 9(5):223-33, 2001
Bussing R, Zima BT, Gary FA, Garvan CW: Use of complementary and alternative medicine for symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Psychiatric Services, Sep;53(9):1096-102, 2002.
Bussing R, Grudnik J, Mason D, Wasiak M, Leonard C: ADHD and conduct disorder: an MRI study in a community sample. World Journal of Biological Psychiatry, Oct;3(4):216-20, 2002.
Bussing R, Gary FA, Mason DM, Leon CE, Sinha K, Garvan CW: Child temperament, ADHD, and caregiver strain: exploring relationships in an epidemiological sample. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, Feb;42(2):184-92, 2003.
Bussing R, Zima BT, Gary FA, Garvan CW: Barriers to detection, help-seeking, and service use for children with ADHD symptoms. J Behav Health Serv Res, Apr-Jun;30(2):176-89, 2003.
Bussing R, Zima BT, Gary FA, Mason DM, Leon CE, Sinha K, Garvan CW: Social networks, caregiver strain, and utilization of mental health services among elementary school students at high risk for ADHD. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, Jul;42(7):842-50, 2003.
Bussing R, Gary FA, Mills TL, Garvan CW: Parental explanatory models of ADHD: gender and cultural variations. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol, Oct;38(10):563-75, 2003.
Bussing R, Mason DM, Leon CE, Sinha K: Agreement between CASA parent reports and provider records of children's ADHD services. J Behav Health Serv Res, Oct-Dec;30(4):462-9, 2003.
Bussing R, Zima BT, Mason D, Hou W, Garvan CW, Forness S: Use and persistence of pharmacotherapy for elementary school students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. J Child Adolesc Psychopharmacol, Spring;15(1):78-87, 2005.
Bussing R, Koro-Ljungberg ME, Gary F, Mason DM, Garvan CW. Exploring help-seeking for ADHD symptoms: a mixed-methods approach. Harv Rev Psychiatry, Mar-Apr;13(2):85-101, 2005.
Preston AS, Fennell EB, Bussing R. Utility of a CPT in diagnosing ADHD among a representative sample of high-risk children: a cautionary study. Child Neuropsychol, Oct;11(5):459-69, 2005.
Bussing R, E Koro-Ljungberg M, Williamson P, Gary FA, Wilson Garvan C. What "Dr. Mom" ordered: a community-based exploratory study of parental self-care responses to children's ADHD symptoms. Soc Sci Med, Aug;63(4):871-82, 2006. Epub 2006 Apr 27.
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