American Psychiatric Foundation Presents Awards for Advancing Minority Mental Health

The American Psychiatric Foundation presented its Awards for Advancing Minority Mental Health last evening at its annual gala, held this year at the City Club of San Francisco. Here are this year’s winners:

• The Latino Program at Positive Impact of Atlanta provides culturally competent mental health and substance abuse treatment services to Latinos affected by HIV. It is the only provider of Spanish-speaking mental health services for people with HIV in Atlanta. In addition to providing these culturally sensitive services at four primary care clinics across Atlanta, the program raises awareness of the need for such services through training programs for clinicians.

• William B. Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., of Washington, D.C., works to address the needs of African Americans. His work includes collaborating with the Veterans Administration to address the problem of African Americans’ being misdiagnosed. Additionally, Dr. Lawson is a researcher with six active grants and an educator working to advance awareness of how cultural issues impact services to African-American patients, and his research has included African Americans in clinical trials.

• LGBT Affirmative Action Program of South Beach Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., serves low socioeconomic LGBT individuals with serious and persistent psychiatric disorders. The program allows these minority individuals to find a community of like individuals and LGBT-sensitive and -inclusive psychiatric services. The program also provides community outreach, as well as in-service education, training, and supervision to staff and therapists in training.

• Benjamin Woo, M.D., of Los Angeles serves the Greater Los Angeles Chinese community through direct services, research, and community outreach. His outreach efforts include writing Chinese newspaper articles to raise awareness on the availability of treatment and serving as a guest speaker on the only Cantonese station in the Greater Los Angeles area. Woo, who volunteers at a community health center to provide free medical care to Chinese-speaking patients, helped to create a culturally sensitive depression collaborative treatment model in primary care to address the high frequency of immigrants prematurely terminating mental care.