UAB Resident Wins O’Leary Award for Building Child/Adolescent Psychiatry Pipeline

Last evening, APA presented Jordana Owens, M.D., a second-year psychiatry resident at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), with the 2024 O’Leary Award for Innovation in Psychiatry. Owens was recognized for her work establishing a child and adolescent psychiatry interest group at UAB. The interest group provides a platform for students and residents to network with child and adolescent psychiatrists, learn about this medical subspeciality, and consider choosing to enter a field that needs many more psychiatrists.

The need is especially pressing in Alabama, where there are only nine child and adolescent psychiatrists for 100,000 youth statewide and where 55 of 67 counties have no child and adolescent psychiatrists.

This year’s award-winning idea hit close to home, as the award’s namesake — Paul O’Leary, M.D., M.Sc. — was an undergraduate, medical student, resident, and faculty member at UAB who championed the idea of a child and adolescent psychiatry interest group. He was both a child and adolescent psychiatrist and forensic psychiatrist before his untimely passing in May 2021.

The O’Leary Award for Innovation was established by the APA Foundation in 2022 in memory of O’Leary, who served in numerous positions at APA, including Assembly speaker and a member of the APA delegation to the AMA. The award recognizes an innovative idea to improve the quality of, efficiency of, and/or access to mental health services — especially for minoritized and underserved communities.

On hand to present the award to Owens during the Diversity Leaders and Alumni Reception were O’Leary’s wife, Malinda O’Leary, Ph.D., and daughters Sophia and Sylvia.

In addition to the award plaque, the recipients receive $5,000 in seed money to help make their idea a reality. Owens plans on using her award money to support local activities for the interest group such as “Lunch and Learn” sessions or community service projects, as well as to support travel to national events including the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Annual Meeting.

“It’s nice to see Paul’s goal come to realization,” said Vasilis K. Pozios, M.D., chief medical officer of the Oakland Community Health Network in Troy, Mich., and outgoing APA Assembly speaker. “Forming an interest group may not seem like a big deal, but to get a framework in place and get people engaged does take vision and courage.”

Pozios was one of the members of the O’Leary Award Selection Committee.

“I love that another resident won this year’s award,” added Declan Grabb, M.D., who received the inaugural O’Leary award last year for a project using artificial intelligence to expedite the patient-intake process. Grabb is finishing up his fourth year of residency at Northwestern University and will be starting a fellowship at Stanford in July.

“The funding is wonderful, but the validation of your idea from an institution like APA is truly incredible,” Grabb continued. “Residents do struggle with getting people to listen to their ideas, and hopefully Jordana and I are showing that young doctors have innovative solutions for improving the health care system.”

Pozios is also enjoying the success of the residents, noting that he reviewed many impressive submissions from young psychiatrists over the first two years of this award. “Based on what I’ve seen, I think today’s residents will be instrumental in building a sustainable future for psychiatry.” ■