New APA president, president-elect and other leadership take office

ATLANTA — At the conclusion of the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, Maria A. Oquendo, MD, began her 1-year term as president of the association.

Anita Everett, MD, section chief of general psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, began her term as president-elect.

Maria A. Oquendo

Oquendo currently serves as the residency training director at New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University and professor and vice chair for education at Columbia University. She also serves as vice president of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and on the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Council and the NIMH’s National Advisory Mental Health Council.

Anita Everett

“This is an amazing time to be a psychiatrist because the field is on the cusp of major discoveries,” Oquendo said in a press release. “We know more about the brain than ever, and new treatments — ranging from pharmacology to behavioral interventions — are being developed. We are poised to join our sister disciplines in medicine to develop preventive strategies. I’m excited about this opportunity to lead the APA at this important time.”

In addition, several other APA leadership members will take office. These include:

Bruce Schwartz, MD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Montefiore Medical Center, as treasurer;
Richard Summers, MD, of the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, as trustee-at-large;
Roger Peele, MD, chief psychiatrist at Montgomery County Government, Rockville, Maryland, as area 3 trustee;
Melinda Young, MD, a practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist in Walnut Creek, CA, as area 6 trustee; and
Uchenna Okoye, MD, MPH, of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at University of California, Los Angeles, as resident-fellow member trustee-elect.