APA Outreach Effort Targets Minority Medical Students

APA's Office of Minority and National Affairs (OMNA) held its third National Minority Mentors Network Specialty Breakfast for medical students in April in New Orleans. As in the past, the breakfast was convened during the annual meeting of the Student National Medical Association and held in conjunction with the Black Psychiatrists of America's (BPA) annual spring conference.

More than 30 medical students attended this year's breakfast. Many more received informational handouts when they visited the joint exhibit booth with BPA and the National Minority Mentors Network. Six students signed up for APA membership.

The 8,000-member Student National Medical Association, which describes itself as “the nation's oldest and largest independent, student-run organization focused on the needs and concerns of medical students of color,” is the student arm of the National Medical Association.

The goal of the National Minority Mentors Network's breakfast meeting, which is hosted with the Student National Medical Association, is to give minority medical students an opportunity to meet and network one on one with psychiatrists from around the country.

During the breakfast, students interested in pursuing psychiatry as their future specialty teamed up with one of the psychiatrists in attendance—all of whom volunteered to serve as a mentor. Last year's breakfast in New York drew more than 60 students, and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) was a special guest.

Eighteen mentors attended this year's breakfast. They included psychiatry department chairs Rahn Bailey, M.D., of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn.; and Gail Mattox, M.D., of More-house College of Medicine in Atlanta.

Other mentors in attendance (including seven alumni of APA's Minority Fellowships) were Timothy Benson, M.D., of Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.; Curley Bonds, M.D., past chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the former King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles (now Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital); Michelle Clark, M.D., the breakfast speaker and moderator and president of the Golden State Medical Association; Ericka Goodwin, M.D., a child and adolescent psychiatrist from Savannah, Ga.; Napoleon Higgins Jr., M.D., CEO of Bay Pointe Behavioral Health Service Inc. in Friendswood, Tex.; Janice Hutchinson, M.D., M.P.H., director of the psychiatry residency training program at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C.; Stephen McLeod-Bryant, M.D., an associate professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston; Gilbert Parks, M.D., of Topeka, Kan.; Annelle Primm, M.D., M.P.H., director of OMNA; James Phillips, M.D., senior associate dean of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston; Toi Harris, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and director of education and diversity in Baylor's Department of Psychiatry and director of the Texas Regional Psychiatry Minority Mentor Network; Sandra Walker, M.D., a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst from Seattle; and Marketa Wills, M.D., of McKinsey and Co. in Cleveland.

Three psychiatry residents also served as mentors: Otis Anderson, M.D., a fourth-year resident at the University of Tennessee-Memphis; Karinn Glover, M.D., a third-year resident at Zucker Hillside Hospital/Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Glen Oaks, N.Y.; and Jason Mensah, D.O., a third-year resident at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

OMNA also holds an annual breakfast meeting for the National Minority Mentors Network each year for psychiatric residents at APA's annual meeting. Thirty-five mentors, 40 residents, and 18 medical students attended this event last month in San Francisco. ▪