APA Honors Innovative Programs in Psychiatric Service Delivery

Since 1949, APA’s Psychiatric Services Achievement Awards have recognized creative models of service delivery and innovative programs for persons with mental illness or disabilities. Four programs providing unique and innovative services for people with mental illness were honored this year and featured in the December 2016 Psychiatric Services. APA presents two Gold Awards (one for an institutionally based program and one for a community-based program), a Silver Award, and a Bronze Award.

• Gold Award for Institutionally Based Program: Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project for Moms; Marcy Ravech, M.S.W., program director, and Nancy Byatt, D.O., M.S., medical director

The Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project for Moms (MCPAP) is a psychiatric consultation and referral program aimed to promote maternal mental health. The program, based in Worcester, Mass., works to help frontline providers screen and manage depression of pregnant women and women one-year postdelivery. Through toolkits on evidence-based guidelines for depression screening and assessment, access to real-time consultations with psychiatrists, and care coordination with community resources, the MCPAP seeks to build the capacity for more providers to screen and identify depression of perinatal women.

• Gold Award for Community-Based Program: New York Service Program for Older People; Nancy Harvey, L.M.S.W., chief executive officer

The Service Program for Older People, based in New York City, provides comprehensive mental health services for people who are 55 and older. This nonprofit, community-based program serves the geriatric population with a higher risk of hospitalization due to frailty, social isolation, and poverty. The program aims to minimize barriers to access of care, particularly transportation barriers, including providing appointments at partner senior centers and other organizations. The program also provides in-home care for patients who are homebound.

• Silver Award: OnTrackNY/WHCS (Washington Heights Community Service); Nannan Lou, L.M.H.C., and Yael Holoschitz, M.D., program directors

The OnTrackNY/WHCS program in the Bronx, New York, is a multidisciplinary program serving patients with early psychosis in any of the New York boroughs. The program provides recovery-oriented treatment for patients aged 16 to 30 within two years of their first psychotic symptoms. As a Coordinated Specialty Care model, OnTrack is an evidence-based, team approach providing services that include medication management, supported education and employment, cognitive and behavioral-based relapse prevention, integrated substance use treatment, suicide prevention, care coordination, and family intervention and support.

• Bronze Award: Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for Primary Care; David Kaye, M.D., program director

The Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for Primary Care program at the University of Buffalo is an access and collaborative care program for children and adolescents funded by the New York State Office of Mental Health as a component program of Project TEACH. Five university-based psychiatry divisions (Columbia University Medical Center, Hofstra Northwell Health, University of Rochester, Upstate Medical University, and University at Buffalo) collaborate to utilize one toll-free phone line to provide real-time psychiatric and telepsychiatric consultations for primary care providers. The program also emphasizes formal education for primary care providers and has been the largest provider of continuing medical education of any child psychiatric access program in the country. ■