Gary Bess, PhD, holds two master’s degrees, one in social work and one in applied sociology, from Case Western Reserve University and Kent State University respectively, and a doctorate in social work from the University of Southern California (USC). He has taught in graduate schools of social work at the University of California, Los Angeles, USC, and California State University (CSU) in Long Beach and Chico. Gary has taught grant writing at UCLA and for the Southern California Center for Nonprofit Management. He has successfully written public and private proposals for funding.
For several years Gary directed free medical clinics in southern California, including the South Bay Free Clinic in Manhattan Beach and the Los Angeles Free Clinic. As executive director, he expanded services while also diversifying funding streams. Since 1991, he has consulted with public and private community-based health and human services organizations, universities, and nonprofits. In this capacity, Gary served as evaluator for a three-year SAMHSA-funded Circles of Care planning grant for a Native American agency in northern California, ending in 2002. Since then he has worked with a national evaluation effort overseen by the Circles of Care Evaluation Technical Assistance Center at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. From this experience, he co-authored two articles for the Journal of the National Center for American Indian, Alaska Native Mental Health Research on the life cycle of the evaluation process and on process evaluation among Native American communities.
Gary was the evaluator for two longitudinal California Board of Corrections (BOC)-funded projects in Butte County. The Mentally Ill Offender Crime Reduction Program is based on an experimental design in which outcome comparisons are made between mentally ill offenders who receive enhanced treatment services, including appearances in a Mental Health Court, and those receiving treatment-as-usual services. The other BOC evaluation involved an assessment of outcomes for probation-involved youth who receive services from five local providers that offer well-established models of care. Other evaluations include a California Department of Mental Health assessment of supportive housing services, a City of Santa Monica assessment of its Homeless Services Network, and a needs assessment of mental health services needs for the Eisner Pediatric & Family Medical Center, located in Downtown Los Angeles.
Along with other colleagues in GBA, Gary recently served as the evaluator for the Butte County Public Health Department's community-wide needs assessment in regard to methamphetamine abuse through a collaboration with the Butte County Methamphetamine Strike Force (BCMSF).