Psychiatrist Patrice Harris, M.D., M.A., Inaugurated 174th AMA President

“We are no longer at a place where those with mental illness and addiction are hidden and ignored, but we are not yet at a place where mental disorders are viewed without stigma and truly integrated into health care,” said long-time APA member Patrice Harris, M.D., M.A., in an address last month after her inauguration as the AMA’s 174th president.

Harris, a former member of the APA Board of Trustees and chair of the AMA’s board, was sworn in during a ceremony at the AMA’s House of Delegates meeting in Chicago. Administering the oath of office was Jack Resneck, M.D., chair of the AMA Board of Trustees. She was elected last year by the House of Delegates.

Ted Grudzinski

Her inauguration in June marks a new milestone in the growing strength of psychiatry and the APA delegation within the House of Delegates. At the same meeting, Rebecca Brendel, M.D., J.D., director of the master’s degree program at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, was appointed to the AMA’s powerful Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs. And Laura Halpin, M.D., Ph.D., a child psychiatry fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, was elected by the House to the Council on Science and Public Health (see "Psychiatrist Appointed to Powerful AMA Ethics Council" here).

APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A., said Harris’s ascent through the ranks of the AMA to the presidency is an example of why involvement in organized medicine is important and what it can accomplish for physicians and patients. “We are honored and delighted to have a psychiatrist and long-time APA member leading the house of medicine as president of the AMA. Her work over the years at APA and the AMA will add value to her new role as the face of the AMA.”

Last month’s meeting was also the occasion of a crucial victory for the APA delegation: The House of Delegates overwhelmingly approved a resolution, sponsored by the Section Council on Psychiatry and endorsed by a broad coalition of physicians, calling for the alignment of regulations governing the privacy of records pertaining to substance use disorders—42 CFR Part 2—with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

The 42 CFR Part 2 regulations were first passed in the 1970s to protect medical confidentiality, but the regulations are an impediment to coordination of care when physicians are unable to access records about a patient’s history of treatment for substance use disorders. (Further coverage of this and other business at the AMA will appear in the next issue of Psychiatric News.)

Harris, who is the first African American woman president of the AMA, said during her address that diversity and inclusion are critical to closing the gap in health disparities and that her presidency will focus on health equity and increasing the diversity of the physician workforce.

“We face big challenges in health care today, and the decisions we make now will move us forward in a future we help create,” she said. “We are no longer at a place where we can tolerate the disparities that plague communities of color, women, and the LGBTQ community. But we are not yet at a place where health equity is achieved in those communities.”

Harris also vowed to elevate mental health as a part of overall health and to increase the understanding of the impact of childhood trauma on health. “From my work with patients who’ve been abused, neglected, diagnosed with a mental illness, subject to childhood trauma, who are homeless or unemployed, I have learned that often-overlooked health determinants have an effect on one’s health over a lifetime,” she said.

During her presidential year, Harris will continue to chair the AMA’s Task Force to Reduce Opioid Abuse, which she has chaired since its inception in 2014. Harris served as director of health services in Fulton County, Ga., and head of the Fulton County Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities. As chief health officer for Fulton County, she spearheaded efforts to integrate public health, behavioral health, and primary care.

First elected to the AMA Board of Trustees in 2011, she has held the executive offices of AMA board secretary and AMA board chair. In addition to her leadership of the opioid task force, Harris has been active on AMA task forces and committees dealing with such issues as health information technology, payment and delivery reform, and private contracting. She also chaired the AMA Council on Legislation and co-chaired the Women Physicians Congress.

She served as trustee-at-large on the APA Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2004. In addition, she was president of the Georgia Psychiatric Physicians Association and founding president of the Georgia Psychiatry Political Action Committee.

Harris succeeds Barbara McAneny, M.D., as president. At the inauguration, McAneny said the AMA would be “in good hands” with Harris.

“We met as delegates of this House over scope-of-practice issues, bonded together over a mutual concern for the health of poor people, and collaborated to make sure that the policies we wrote were respectful of the needs of all,” McAneny said. “Patrice has managed a health care department in a large diverse city, run a private practice of child psychiatry, and served on many boards and commissions. … As chair of the Task Force to Reduce Opioid Abuse, Patrice has changed the way the country looks at the role of physicians, from recipients of blame to agents of change. And she has used her position to prove the AMA is more inclusive than ever before and has broken through another glass ceiling.

“She is truly a steel magnolia, and people best not forget it,” McAneny said.

Ken Certa, M.D., a member of the Section Council on Psychiatry and Harris’s campaign manager during her presidential campaign (and several other elections) noted that it was then APA President Daniel Borenstein, M.D., who appointed Harris to the section council in 2000.

“Twenty years ago, our AMA made a decision that enabled specialty societies, like APA, to add delegates proportionate to size,” Certa told Psychiatric News. “When deciding how to increase the delegation, our APA president wisely chose a smart, hard-working, personable, and already accomplished young woman from Atlanta. It was an inspired choice.”

(Borenstein also appointed Certa and several others.)

“Patrice had already been a rock star in psychiatry, having served in the Georgia district branch and on the APA Board as a young physician member,” Certa said. “Her transition to AMA was seamless. She has predictably been a tireless advocate for American medicine, which of course means our specialty of psychiatry.

“Several years ago, I was given the easiest job on earth, to serve as campaign manager for Patrice as she sought to join the AMA Board of Trustees,” Certa said. “She was such an obvious choice. … I could not imagine a reason not to vote for her.” ■