John W. Finney

John W. Finney, PhD, is a Research Health Science Specialist at, and former Director of, the Center for Innovation to Implementation at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and a Consulting Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  Much of his research has focused on evaluations of substance use disorder (SUD) treatment programs.  Translating research evidence on effective SUD treatment practices into routine clinical care also is an area of interest.  In that regard, he is a former Research Coordinator of the VA Substance Use Disorders Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI).  His current research focuses on evaluating VA research career development programs, synthesizing research findings on SUD treatment effects, and examing SUD care performance measures, including relationships between process performance meansures and patient outcomes at different levels of analysis.

Finney has served on advisory boards for National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Research Centers in Michigan and California, and for the Treatment Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a fellow in the Addictions Division of the American Psychological Association. He received a BA in psychology from the University of Oklahoma and a PhD in social psychology/ personality from the University of Colorado.