Center for
Global Health

Scholar

Languages: English (native), German (basic)

Bio statement

Torrey A. Creed, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and a licensed clinical psychologist. She is the founder and director of the Penn Collaborative for CBT and Implementation Science, where she leads a team of experts in developing and evaluating strategies to implement and sustain evidence-based mental health practices—particularly cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)—in under-resourced communities. Domestically, her work emphasizes Medicaid-funded community mental health systems through initiatives such as the Penn Beck Community Initiative, which advances sustainable, high-quality CBT for clients with pressing mental health needs, and the COAPS (Certified Older Adult Peer Specialists) training and employment program, which empowers older adults with behavioral health issues to improve their quality of life.

Globally, Dr. Creed serves as Health Policy Advisor to Partners in Health, where she has led the implementation of Cognitive Processing Therapy in Haiti and broadened access to CBT in Rwanda. She has also collaborated on shorter projects with providers in Canada (focused on Indigenous populations) and in Inner Mongolia/China (funded by the World Health Organization). Her research focuses on pragmatic and sustainable strategies to expand access to high-quality mental health care, particularly in low-resource contexts. Over the past decade, she has collaborated with community partners, industry leaders, technology start-ups, and fellow implementation science researchers to explore the role of technology in scaling mental health care delivery.

Dr. Creed serves as Senior Implementation Consultant for Lyssn.io, where she helps develop and evaluate artificial intelligence-based tools to enhance therapist training, supervision, and culturally responsive care. Her federally funded research includes integrating behavioral economics to strengthen CBT delivery in telehealth and building natural language processing-based tools to support therapists. She has also provided expert consultation to Google, Psych Hub, and other organizations seeking to leverage technology to improve access to care.

In addition to her research and global collaborations, Dr. Creed serves on scientific advisory boards, teaches and mentors students and fellows, and provides workshops and consultation internationally—advancing the mission of expanding equitable access to evidence-based mental health care around the world.

Recent global health projects

I am currently collaborating with Partners in Health (PiH), working to increase access to quality healthcare in impoverished communities across the world. Our goal is to strengthen the infrastructure in 11 Low and Middle Income Countries (LMIC) to increase broad access to cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). In this capacity, I lead a program of implementation and adaptation of Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) at Partners in Health in Haiti (Zanmi Lasante), which serves all 12 districts of Haiti. This work includes bi-weekly supervision calls with the Haiti team, ongoing adaptations to CPT to incrase its fit in the Haitian context, and strategies to integrate CPT into the workflows of the health system.

In addition, I have an established collaboration with the PiH - Rwanda site (Inshutu mu Buzima), in parnership with their Ministry of Health, to implement CBT in the mental health services across the 40 districts of Rwanda. Ultimately, the end-goal will be to strengthen infrastructure and implement CBT in a total of 11 LMIC, with 18,000 PiH staff across those countries.

I am also a member of a multinational group Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics (https://www.dagstuhl.de/seminars/seminar-calendar/seminar-details/25361) working to leverage natural language processing and machine learning to develop AI-based tools to scale up access to evidence-based practices for supervisors, clinician, and people seeking care. Our first meeting was in Sept 2025 so while several papers and grant proposals are underway, there has not yet been time for publications from this collaboration. I will be one of the organizers for the next meeting of this group, and am currently working on the structure with a colleagues from China, Ireland, and Germany.

Selected publications

Mora Ringle, V., Ganss, E.,, Menendez Solorzano, J.D., Rosado, A.R., & Creed, T.A. (2025). Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Training and Implementation: Comparisons Between Spanish-Speaking and English Monolingual Therapists. International Journal of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41811-025-00257-0

Kuo PB, Calloway A, Halvorson MA, Creed TA. Predictors of skill trajectories in the implementation of cognitive behavioral therapy. Implement Sci Commun. 2025 Sep 30;6(1):94. doi: 10.1186/s43058-025-00774-1. PMID: 41029408; PMCID: PMC12487072.

Becker-Haimes EM, Mandell DS, Kuo PB, Lynch KG, Brady M, Young S, Creed TA. Behavioral Nudges to Enhance Fidelity in Telehealth Sessions (BENEFITS): Protocol for Developing and Pilot Testing a Telehealth Tool to Improve Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Implementation. JMIR Res Protoc. 2025 Sep 18;14:e76035. doi: 10.2196/76035. PMID: 40966682; PMCID: PMC12491885.

Creed, T.A., Valentin, C., Affricot, E., Eustache, E., Fast, R., Bedard-Gilligan, M.A., Coleman, S., Forbush, L., Dubuisson, W., Therosme, T., Pierre, E., Arelus, D., Fils-Aime, R., Houde, A., Kelly, K., & Raviola, G: Adaptation and sustainability of an evidence-based practice for PTSD in Haiti. In Tyler, Jeremy (Chair). Serving the Underserved: Victories and Challenges in Global Dissemination of EBPs for Underserved Communities. Symposium presentation at the 53th Annual Convention of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, Atlanta, GA November 2019.

Creed TA, Frankel SA, German R, Green KL, Jager-Hyman S, Pontoski K, Adler A, Wolk CB, Stirman SW, Waltman SH, Williston MA, Sherrill R, Evans AC, & Beck  AT (2016). Implementation of transdiagnostic cognitive therapy in diverse community settings: The Beck Community Initiative. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 84(12), 1116-1126. doi: 10.1037/ccp0000105

Last Updated: 06 October 2025