Anise Health and UC Berkeley Awarded NIH Grant to Pioneer Culturally Adapted Digital Mental Health Care for Asian Americans
Strategic research collaboration between Anise Health and UC Berkeley, supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), aims to develop culturally adapted evidence-based interventions to reduce disparities in mental health service access and improve quality of care for Asian Americans.
NEW YORK, NY and BERKELEY, CA – Anise Health and the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health today announced a strategic research collaboration to pioneer digital mental health tools for Asian Americans, supported by a $600,000 Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the NIH.
The project, titled "Anise Health: Digital Mental Health for Asian Americans," aims to refine and evaluate Anise Health’s culturally adapted care model. This research focuses on how a technology-enabled platform can best address the unique cultural stressors—such as bicultural tension, intergenerational conflict, and race-based trauma—that drive mental health disparities in the Asian community.
Addressing a Critical Public Health Gap
The Asian American community, now 25 million strong, have reported the greatest increase in depression and anxiety across all racial groups since 2020, with 53% citing mental health concerns as a significant source of stress. Despite this, Asians remain the least likely of all groups to receive mental health treatments, and Asian young adults are the only racial group for whom suicide is the leading cause of death. This highlights the urgent need for accessible, specialized solutions, as traditional evidence-based practices often fail to adequately address the specific sociocultural stressors experienced by this population.
A Research-Driven Partnership
The study is led by a Multiple Principal Investigator (mPI) team consisting of Alice Zhang, MBA, Co-founder and CEO of Anise Health, and Brian TaeHyuk Keum, PhD, an Acting Associate Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. His research aims to mitigate mental and behavioral health disparities by examining culturally-informed, intersectional, and digitally-relevant social determinants such as online violence and discrimination, gendered racism, gendered racial socialization, and affirmative coping and prevention approaches. Integrating public health, counseling psychology, and technology, he also explores disparities in mental health services for minoritized clients and culturally sensitive digital mental health platforms. Co-Investigator, Ummul-Kiram Kathawalla, PhD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Practice in Psychology at Suffolk University, leads the development of the project’s clinical tools and training protocols. She leverages her extensive expertise in delivering and supervising culturally adapted evidence-based care to ensure the platform meets the highest clinical standards. Her research examines how discrimination and sociocultural context shape identity development and well-being across marginalized communities, with a particular focus on Asian Americans and Muslim Americans.
"Working with UC Berkeley and clinical thought leaders like Dr. Keum and Dr. Kathawalla allows us to bridge the gap between academic expertise and scalable digital interventions," said Alice Zhang, CEO of Anise Health. "Our goal is to establish a new gold standard of care that is not only accessible but specifically designed for the nuanced lived experiences of Asian Americans."
"Anise Health’s innovative platform represents a critical advancement in how we deliver mental health care to the Asian American community," said Dr. Brian TaeHyuk Keum. "By integrating cultural nuances directly into the digital experience, we are moving away from 'one-size-fits-all' models toward a truly tailored approach. This collaboration allows us to take research-based insights out of the lab and directly into the hands of clinicians and clients, enabling us to rigorously test and scale interventions that honor the diverse lived experiences of Asian Americans."
Demonstrated Clinical Impact
Anise Health has already demonstrated significant impact, with preliminary data showing that its model drives high patient engagement and results in statistically significant improvements in depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms in just eight weeks. The NIH-funded project builds upon these results to further refine and validate the platform’s efficacy for the Asian community.
Bridging the Gap: Validating a New Standard of Asian Mental Health Care
The project focuses on three primary objectives to adapt and validate therapy interventions for the Asian American community:
Care Model Optimization: Refining evidence-based, culturally adapted clinical protocols which address key sociocultural factors influencing mental health outcomes.
Clinician Training: Assessing and enhancing the specialized training provided to therapists to ensure the highest quality of culturally responsive service delivery.
Efficacy Evaluation: Conducting a clinical trial to measure improvements in clinical outcomes, treatment satisfaction, and engagement within the Asian American community.
Call for Participants
Anise Health is currently recruiting participants for this groundbreaking clinical study. Individuals interested in participating in the research or learning more about eligibility are encouraged to contact info@anisehealth.co
About Anise Health
Anise Health is pioneering culturally-attuned and personalized mental health care for Asian Americans with its AI-powered digital platform. Anise trains its diverse team of providers, intelligently matches providers to patients, and recommends personalized treatment plans according to its specialized care model which blends teletherapy, behavioral health coaching and evidence-based digital resources to drive best-in-class clinical outcomes. As a result, 93% of Anise clients show improvements in symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress by Week 8 of care. To make care affordable, Anise accepts a variety of insurance, including Optum (part of United Healthcare), Aetna, Blue Shield of California, and Anthem, and offers HSA/FSA benefits and superbills for its self-pay clients. For more information, visitwww.anisehealth.co.
About UC Berkeley School of Public Health
For more than 75 years, UC Berkeley School of Public Health has been a global health leader in research innovation, educational excellence, and social impact. Berkeley Public Health’s network of faculty, students, alumni (more than 18,500), and partners innovate and collaborate to solve the most pressing public health problems of our time: climate change, pandemic outbreaks, chronic diseases, and social inequality. UC Berkeley School of Public Health is preparing the students in our 20+ graduate programs—as well as our healthy cohort of undergraduate students—to become public health changemakers. As future public health leaders, they will push forward our vision of the basic human right to a healthy life. For more news about UC Berkeley School of Public Health, please visit publichealth.berkeley.edu.
Mandatory Grant Disclosure: Research reported in this press release was supported by the National Institute Of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R41MH134727. The total project cost of $601,186 is 100% funded by Federal money. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
