Everett Chosen APA’s Next President-Elect

APA’s voting members have selected Anita Everett, M.D., of Glenwood, Md., to become APA’s next president-elect. Everett ran against Frank Brown, M.D., of Stone Mountain, Ga., APA’s current treasurer.

Everett, currently APA’s trustee-at-large, is division director of community psychiatry and faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and School of Public Health. She leads health care transformation and clinical program development. She is active in APA leadership on the Board of Trustees, councils, and Assembly. She is a Maryland Psychiatric Society past president and member of the Maryland Psychiatric Foundation.

“Wow! What an honor to have been elected president-elect of APA,” commented Everett in an interview. “I am greatly humbled and personally inspired by the confidence that voting members of our APA placed in me and hope to execute the office with grace, passion, compassion, and fun. Dr. Brown was a very honorable opponent who has served APA well for many years.”

Asked about her priorities for her presidential year, Everett noted that she has three: access to treatment, modernizing member benefits, and community psychiatry programs.

“We now know more than we ever have about the predisposing risk factors, diagnosis, and management of psychiatric conditions,” she said. “Treatment works, yet far too many people are untreated or experience symptoms for too long before they are able to access effective treatment. Over the last several years, APA has played an increasingly important role in fighting for increased access to treatment. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has incorporated parity for psychiatric diagnosis as a requirement in insurance coverage, and millions of Americans now have insurance as a result of provisions in the ACA. We still have much to advocate for to assure that all Americans have access to psychiatric treatment. We will need our APA to assure that the next White House administration understands the needs of Americans with psychiatric conditions.”

The overarching vision she has set for APA is that it continues along the path of being “the essential ‘go-to’ organization that is accessible to all psychiatrists and supports practice, professionalism, and peer support from medical school through retirement. Over the next several months, I will be talking with many community and public psychiatrists who were so supportive of my candidacy about ideas. Modern community behavioral health systems of care provide a range of services to patients that are often culturally diverse, health underserved, and otherwise disempowered. I hope to be able to highlight effective community psychiatry programs.”

In the race for treasurer, Bruce Schwartz, M.D., of the Bronx, N.Y., emerged the winner over Linda Worley, M.D., of Fayetteville, Ariz.

For trustee-at-large, Richard Summers, M.D., of Philadelphia outpolled Rebecca Brendel, M.D., J.D., of Boston and Geetha Jayaram, M.D., of Baltimore.

In the race for Area 3 trustee, Roger Peele, M.D., of Rockville, Md., won over Steven Daviss, M.D., of Baltimore.

In the race for Area 6 trustee, Melinda Young, M.D., of Lafayette, Calif., won over Robert Cabaj, M.D., of San Francisco.

Each year the Association’s resident-fellow members elect a resident-fellow member trustee-elect, who the following year rotates into the position of resident-fellow member trustee. The winner of this year’s race is Uchenna B. Okoye, M.D., M.P.H., a resident at the UCLA Semel Institute in Los Angeles. His opponents were Jacques Ambrose, M.D., a resident at Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Lebanon, N.H., and Matt Salmon, D.O., a resident at Maricopa Integrated Health System in Phoenix.

Election results were approved by the Tellers Committee in February, but the results will not be official until after the Board of Trustees reviews them at its meeting this month. All of the winning candidates will assume their positions on the Board at the close of the Annual Meeting in May. ■