Pathway to the Future: Engage New Members, Embrace Diversity and Inclusion, and Extend Global Presence

At last year’s APA Annual Meeting, I described the three areas in which I planned to focus my efforts as president to help APA strengthen it for the future: engage new members, embrace diversity and inclusion, and extend APA’s global presence. Encouraged by the many members whom I’ve met since my presidential campaign, I listened a lot and sought to find ways to communicate my support for their varied interests and goals. As I traveled over the past year as your president, I have continued to engage in these conversations and learned quite a lot about members’ views and expectations of their professional association that I’d like to share with you in this column.

Let’s start with APA’s vision—that is, to be “the voice and conscience of modern psychiatry” in support of our mission to promote the highest quality of care for all whom we serve and advance and represent the profession of psychiatry. We do this by promoting psychiatric education and research as we work to serve the professional needs of our almost 39,000 members. In addition, we seek to establish best practices for clinical treatment, with an emphasis on patient- focused treatment decisions, access to care, prevention, and sensitivity toward our patients and their families. Our established principles of treatment are scientifically based, and the science that has emerged over the last decade, combined with current technology, is a place where our strong engagement with residents and early career psychiatrists is essential to assuring a strong future for our field. As we incorporate more technology into communication, service delivery, and training, we must continue to create opportunities for our young colleagues and offer our support as they make their own special contributions to APA and the field.

As an organization, we require that members maintain the highest ethical standards of professional conduct. We value and respect diverse views within the field and the Association, and this respect must extend to our role in the broader society in which we live and work. Understanding the impact of social determinants of health on our patients and challenges to their mental health and psychological well-being is a part of how we achieve diversity and inclusion throughout the profession. Beyond the implications for improved patient care, however, is the relationship we have with our colleagues to be supportive and respectful of them. Our membership reflects the vast diversity of our society, and achieving professional status does not mean that some members can avoid the challenges facing the population groups from which they come. We are all responsible for creating an organization that gives all our members a sense of belonging and being respected and valued for who they are. It is that feeling of supportive energy and commitment from others that allows all members to do their best work.

As the largest psychiatric society in the world, we have a significant role in the growing global psychiatric community. Our participation and leadership in this space will certainly guide psychiatric clinical practice, training, research, and policy development for the future. From our collaborative research activities to our participation in global initiatives on health care coverage, we have a strong global presence in key areas of psychiatry. Many APA members are already working with colleagues around the world in these areas. Over the next few years, that number will expand as more of our junior colleagues become involved in international activities.

To paraphrase a song from “Hamilton,” “History Has Its Eyes on Us,” I look forward to continuing to work with you in these important areas for many years to come. Together we are building a strong APA, one that is positioned to readily respond to the changing health care landscape on both the domestic and global levels, embrace our young colleagues, and support our diverse membership and the patients we serve. ■