APA Statements from President Candidates
Renee L. Binder, M.D.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address the membership of AWP. I have been a member of AWP since its beginning, and served as Treasurer from 1989-1990.
In my administrative roles at the University of California School of Medicine, I have made significant contributions to the welfare of women. As Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the School of Medicine, I have facilitated the appointment, promotion, and retention of women faculty. I have been involved in educating chairs of departments about unconscious bias in hiring that works against women and minorities. I also have worked to change the culture in departments of the medical school to make them more sensitive to women's needs, e.g. not having faculty meetings very early in the morning. In addition, I developed an innovative program at UCSF to financially support the expenses of child care and elder care for faculty members with caregiver responsibilities during the time that they attend professional meetings. As Interim Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF, I appointed women to senior leadership positions including Chief at the VA Hospital, Associate Chair of Research, and Director of Residency Training. In addition, I have served as a member of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on the Status of Women and as Chair of the Faculty Welfare Committee. I helped develop family friendly policies for women faculty and staff including childbearing and childrearing leave policies. I also led an initiative for a tuition waiver for children of staff and faculty members that would help recruit and retain staff and faculty members with children.
As a researcher, I have done studies on sexual assault and how to help women after an assault. I have also published in the area of workplace harassment and discrimination. In addition, I have written about women psychiatric patients as perpetrators and victims of violence and therapeutic strategies for decreasing this violence.
In my leadership roles at the APA, I have addressed issues relevant to women. As Chair of the APA Committee on Judicial Action, I led the effort to have the APA sign on to amicus briefs decriminalizing women who used substances during their pregnancy and were charged with endangerment of a fetus or infant death. In addition, I co-authored an APA Resource Document on child custody controversies including a section in support of gay and lesbian parenting. I was a member of the Committee on Women for six years. During my tenure, we ensured that the DSM-III did not include diagnoses with stereotyped biases against women. Please see my website at: www.reneebinder.com for more information.
As President-Elect of the APA, I will continue to support women and women's issues and appoint women to leadership positions. I would greatly appreciate your vote.
Mary Helen Davis, M.D.
I entered medical school at the end of an era where the percent of women in the class averaged 10-15% and although that number has grown to or exceeds 50% in most academic institutions, women are still disproportionately underrepresented in higher level academic and leadership positions. I have been fortunate to have experienced wonderful mentorship from both men and women over my career and although I have long since left academic medicine I remain committed to mentoring relationships. I have mentored many ECPS and MITs in leadership positions within the APA, and regularly speak to MIT groups on leadership, advocacy, professionalism, the role of professional organizations in their career, and work/life balance. As President-Elect I would be especially sensitive to equitable gender consideration in making leadership appointments to key components. Professionally, I am a clinician with a longstanding interest in women's mental health, gender and role issues. I conducted my early research in sexual trauma and have treated this population throughout my career. In one of my groups a patient told an individual new to the group that "Dr. Davis is in the business of building strong women", I could not ask for a better epitaph.
Like many women leaders I have an inclusive and collaborative leadership style, have high energy, and am committed to getting things done and done right. I have been in both academic medicine and private practice and am currently the Medical Director of an Integrated Behavioral Oncology Program. I have served in APA leadership over the past twenty years, both in the Assembly and on the Board of Trustees and have chaired or been a member of numerous workgroups. My focus if elected will be on managing the demands of healthcare in transition, population health and protecting the privilege and integrity of psychiatry practice in a changing healthcare delivery system. If the APA is truly going to take advantage of its strength in numbers then we must invite our subspecialty organizations to the table in relevant and meaningful fashion.
I invite you to learn more thru my web site: mhdavis4apa.com and would also love to hear your concerns and aspirations for our organizational future. Please feel free to contact me at mhdavis610@aol.com. Thank you for your time and interest I would be most appreciative of your vote.
Jeffrey Lieberman, M.D.
Achieving gender equality is vital to our profession. Since 1982, the proportion of women graduating from medical school has almost doubled to nearly 50%. Over the same period, the percentage of women choosing postgraduate training in psychiatry rose to 55% of medical students as of 2010.
However, these trends have not yet translated into women achieving equal placement in senior faculty and leadership positions. Women make up 37% of full-time psychiatry faculty, for example, but only 15% of full professors. For psychiatry to benefit fully from the intellectual resources and contributions of women psychiatrists, it is essential that women be enabled to develop their careers more effectively. The APA can play an important role in this critical process. As president I would promote mentorship and networking programs for early, mid-career and senior women APA members and continue to emphasize the advancement of women to positions in the APA's elected offices and other positions of authority.
The APA's mission as a forceful advocate in representing the psychiatric field's interests to the government and key stakeholder groups requires the equal participation of all its members to be maximally effective. We must take advantage of the opportunities before us to redesign reimbursement systems, develop new models of care, introduce preventive psychiatric approaches in community and primary care settings, and implement patient-centered outcomes research, among many other issues.
One of my first priorities will be to convene a task force comprised of experts in health care services, policy, finance, representatives of APA Offices of Government Relations, Health Care Systems and Finance and the APA membership to devise a strategy for the provision of quality mental health care services in this challenging financial environment. As on every committee at the APA I will fully support equal representation of women in both membership and leadership positions.
As chair of psychiatry at Columbia University, one of my priorities has been to establish an environment conducive to career advancement for women faculty. To achieve this I appointed women to senior leadership positions, and supported women's faculty workshops, career seminars, mentorship programs, and travel to national meetings for women in the department. We have achieved equal gender distribution of members on our Appointments & Promotions Committee as well as on search committees. I am gratified that these efforts to address the gender gap have effected change. In my seven years as chair, greater numbers of women faculty have reached associate and full professorship, been appointed to vice chair and division director positions, assumed associate deanships and were offered department chairs at other universities.
If elected president of the APA I will be similarly committed to supporting leadership roles for women, although noting that the APA has already made progress on this front. In the last nine years, five of the presidents of the APA have been women. While recent history shows great progress we should not forget that our goal of equal gender representation should not be considered a remarkable victory but rather the achievement of a normal standard long overdue.
Copyright 2011 Association of Women Psychiatrists