Amy Byers

Amy Byers is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in the Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics. She specializes in epidemiology of aging, focusing on late-life mental health, suicide prevention, and intersections between physical and mental health in veterans and post-incarceration populations.

• Education: BA in Anthropology (Scripps College), MPH in Chronic Disease Epidemiology (Yale), PhD in Epidemiology of Aging (Yale), Research Fellowship in Geriatric Psychiatry (Cornell).

Her research employs advanced epidemiological methods to analyze national databases, examining suicide risk, dementia incidence, and healthcare disparities in vulnerable groups. She has secured major funding from NIH (NIMH, NIA, NIMHD), VA, and DoD.

Recent publications highlight her work on:

• Post-incarceration cognitive decline
• Cannabis use in older adults
• Trauma-exposure and suicide risk
• Vaccine efficacy in aging
• Prescribing cascade risks

Key awards include the UCSF Older Americans Independence Center Genius Award and a VA Research Career Scientist Award. She leads the first VA R01-level national longitudinal study on veteran suicide.

Her work bridges biostatistics, geropsychiatry, and public health policy to develop targeted risk assessment tools for aging populations.