Bradford Felker MD dually trained and completed Board Certification in both psychiatry and internal medicine.  His career has focused on improving access and care for Veterans who lack mental health services.  His early career focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating mental health programs within primary care.  This work led to the development and national implementation of the core components of integrated care, which contributed to other VA work that would become Primary Care Mental Health Integration (PCMHI) program for integrating mental health into VA primary care clinics.  Locally, at VA Puget Sound, he led a team that implemented and developed the first PCMHI program that included two medical centers and seven Community Based Outpatient Clinics.  This led to further national VA work on the development of curriculum to help promote PCMHI.  He also worked with a national team to develop and implement the Collaborative Care Management model known as Translating Initiatives for Depression into Effective Solutions (TIDES).

It was through this integrated PCMHI work that he realized rural patient populations lacked access to quality mental health care and he became interested in how the emerging telehealth technologies could be leveraged to improve mental health care.  With the goal to improve care for this population, he developed, implemented, and led the first Telemental Health Service at VA Puget Sound.  On a national level, he worked with a team to stand up one of the original Mental Health Regional Telemental Health Hubs: The Western Telemental Health Network (WTN).  This program became one of the original VA Clinical Resource Hubs that are now located across the country. 

He serves as a Professor in the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.  He continues to lead a University of Washington Department of Psychiatry Resident rotations on Telehealth.  He also works with the University of Washington Behavioral Health Institute (BHI) where he has helped lead and implement a Telehealth lecture series for Washington State that has now grown to have national representation.  He serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Technology and Behavioral Sciences and served as the Editor for a Special Edition on Education and Training for this journal.

From a research perspective, he has served as a principle and co-investigator on numerous research of projects that focused on the development and implementation PCMHI and Care Manager programs. More recently, his research has focused on evaluation and implementation of telemental health programs. Currently, he leads the Mental Health Team of the Primary Care Analytic Team tasked with evaluating the national VA Clinical Resource Hubs.  In addition, further ongoing research includes using Implementation Science Methodologies to implement a Digital Navigation program to help close the Digital Divide with Community Health Clinics across Washington State.    

Finally, he is an Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) Veteran and is a retired Captain in the United States Navy Reserve.