APA Achievement Award Winners Meet Contemporary Challenges With Innovation
Abstract
This year’s winners use collaboration and community engagement to extend psychiatric expertise to distressed populations and rural hospitals facing a shortage of mental health manpower.
APA’s 2020 Achievement Award winners include innovative community and academic-based services focusing on veterans’ health and mental health, support for victims of sex trafficking, and psychiatric support of primary care practices given the shortage of mental health professionals.
Since 1949, the Psychiatric Services Achievement Awards have recognized creative models of service delivery and innovative programs for people with mental illness or disabilities. Each year, APA bestows a Gold, a Silver, and a Bronze Award. Following are this year’s winners:
Lt. Col. (Ret.) Army Medical Service Corps Michael Richardson, vice president for mental health and brain health programs of the Wounded Warrior Project’s Warrior Care Network
Mollie Gordon, M.D., medical director of the Baylor College of Medicine Anti-Human Trafficking Program
Zsuzsa Szombathyne Meszaros, M.D., Ph.D., director of the residency training program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at SUNY Upstate Medical Center
Gold Award: Warrior Care Network. The Warrior Care Network, based in Jacksonville, Fla., is a collaboration of the Wounded Warrior Project and four academic medical centers throughout the United States: Emory Healthcare, Massachusetts General Hospital, Rush University Medical Center, and UCLA Health. The program operates in cooperation with the Department of Veterans Affairs to enhance access to clinical and family-centered treatment for veterans experiencing posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and related conditions. Care is offered through standard outpatient treatment and an innovative intensive outpatient program.
Silver Award: Baylor College of Medicine Anti-Human Trafficking Program. In this collaboration with the Houston Mayor’s Office and the Office of the Governor of Texas, Baylor Department of Psychiatry faculty members supervise two psychology postdoctoral fellows and a clinical social worker/case manager to address the problems related to human trafficking through a medical and public health lens. Through the program, health care professionals and community providers are trained in the identification and treatment of victims of human trafficking. By maintaining a working relationship with community-based case managers, the program enables victims to be referred for mental health treatment. An interdisciplinary approach enables the appropriate response to patients’ individual needs and provides a better chance for recovery and healing from this trauma.
Bronze Award: SUNY Upstate Medical University. SUNY Upstate Medical University is located in a rural area where there is a serious shortage of psychiatrists. To help mitigate this problem, the school’s residency program has partnered with rural hospitals to support additional residency positions that will provide community care. The hospitals contract with the school with the understanding that the residents assigned to them, besides receiving standard residency training, will spend two months of the first two years of residency and one day a week during the second two years at a rural hospital site. The residents are committed to spending the five years after residency at the rural site. The first graduate has now started full-time work, and 12 residents are providing care to rural communities where people in need would otherwise have great difficulty accessing psychiatric care. ■
