Learn about our mission, our team, and our commitment to your recovery.
MDPH Rehab opened in 2019 as a small outpatient clinic on Main Street in downtown Pleasanton. Our founders — a clinical psychologist and an internist who had met during their residencies at an Alameda County hospital — had watched too many Tri-Valley patients fall out of care because the nearest residential options required long commutes.
The outpatient clinic filled quickly. Within 18 months it was obvious the next step couldn't wait. Patients who needed higher-acuity care were either relapsing during the long commutes or not admitting at all. The decision to expand into residential care was less a growth strategy and more a clinical necessity.
Our 70-bed residential facility opened in 2022, built on the same Main Street block. Seven years after opening the outpatient doors, we have served more than 6,400 patients across the full continuum of care, and our 145-person clinical team still includes eight clinicians from the original outpatient cohort.
Prevention and treatment in the same building. Our mission is to make the Tri-Valley a region where addiction is caught earlier, treated sooner, and relapsed less often — through outpatient prevention work, residential treatment when needed, and community partnerships that extend our reach beyond our walls. We invest in Pleasanton school partnerships, first-responder peer training, and free community education nights alongside the clinical care that brings patients through our doors.
Creative expression as healing. Our music therapy room, movement studio, and expressive arts sessions are programmed daily because verbal therapy alone cannot reach how trauma is held in the body. These are licensed clinical modalities at MDPH — not enrichment activities.
Strengths-based recovery. Our intake assessment maps what already works — relationships, vocational skills, cultural or spiritual resources, resilience that has been developed elsewhere — and builds the treatment plan around amplifying those. The patient is not a problem list.
Community reintegration. Treatment that ends at the building's front door is incomplete. Our discharge planning begins in week one and includes sober-living introductions across the Tri-Valley, employer partnerships in Pleasanton, Dublin, and Livermore, and alumni programming that keeps the recovery community connected.
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Licensed clinical psychologist. Met co-founder Dr. Halvorsen during residency at an Alameda County hospital. Oversees clinical operations and the outpatient-to-residential continuum design.
Co-Founder & Medical Director
Board-certified in internal medicine and addiction medicine. Oversees all detox and residential medical protocols. Maintains a clinical appointment at a Bay Area teaching hospital.
Addiction Psychiatrist, Dual Diagnosis Lead
Board-certified in psychiatry with an addiction medicine subspecialty. Manages psychiatric medication for every dual diagnosis patient. Bilingual Spanish/English.
Director of Clinical Services
Licensed clinical social worker with chaplaincy training. Oversees individual, group, and family therapy across all levels of care. Runs the optional spiritual-care track for patients who want one.
Director of Creative Arts Therapies
Board-certified music therapist. Designs and supervises the music therapy and expressive arts programming that is central to our creative-expression healing philosophy.
Family Programming Coordinator
Marriage and family therapist. Runs the weekly family sessions, biweekly multi-family workshops, and parent or partner coaching calls for current patients' households.
Director of Nursing
Fourteen years of acute-care nursing before joining MDPH. Trains every nursing hire in trauma-informed bedside practice and leads the 24/7 nursing team.
Alumni & Community Reintegration Lead
Personally in long-term recovery; MDPH alumna from 2020. Coordinates sober-living introductions, employer partnerships across the Tri-Valley, and the weekly alumni community meeting.
MDPH Rehab is licensed by the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to provide addiction and mental health treatment. Our clinical staff maintain licensure with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences and the Medical Board of California as applicable to their respective scopes of practice.
"Sixteen years of relapsed cycles before this program. What finally worked: nobody rushed. Four years sober next month."
— Thaddeus B., long-relapse-finally-worked arc
"I came in angry and wrote the whole thing off by hour two. The intake clinician didn't push. By week two I was doing work I'd refused for years."
— Serafina L., reluctant-starter arc
"Seventy-one years old. MDPH treated me with the same clinical seriousness as the 25-year-olds. Two years sober. I paint every morning."
— Wilhelmina O., retired-senior-new-start arc
