APA Announces Candidates For 2004 Election

The APA Nominating Committee announced last month that Baltimore psychiatrist Steven Sharfstein, M.D., and Jagannathan Srinivasaraghavan, M.D., of Anna, Ill., will compete in APA’s 2004 election for president-elect of APA.

Sharfstein, APA’s senior vice president, is president of the nonprofit Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore and clinical professor and vice chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Maryland Medical School. He served as APA secretary from 1991 to 1995 and is a former APA deputy medical director.

Srinivasaraghavan (also known as Dr. Ashok Van) is professor and chief of the Division of Community and Public Psychiatry at Southern Illinois School of Medicine and medical director of the Choate Center for Mental Health in Anna, Ill. He is also the Caucus of Asian-American Psychiatrists’ representative to the APA Assembly.

For the first time since APA’s Board of Trustees voted last year to downsize itself by eliminating one of the two vice-president positions and the members approved that change in the 2003 election, there will no race for vice president this year. APA’s other vice president, Pedro Ruiz, M.D., was elected in 2003 for a two-year term, which expires in 2005.

The position of APA treasurer is also up for election next year, and the candidates are Patrice Harris, M.D., of Decatur, Ga., and Carolyn Robinowitz, of Bethesda, Md. Harris is APA’s outgoing trustee-at-large, and Robinowitz is a member of the Board of Directors of American Psychiatric Publishing Inc. Both serve on the APA delegation to the AMA, Harris as an alternate delegate and Robinowitz as a delegate.

Also in compliance with the Board’s downsizing plan, the treasurer elected in 2004 will serve as treasurer from May 2004 to May 2005 and will serve as secretary-treasurer from May 2005 to May 2006. The current secretary, Nada Stotland, M.D., was elected in 2003 for a two-year term, which expires in 2005. A secretary-treasurer will be elected in 2006 for a two-year term.

The race for trustee-at-large is the only three-way race in the 2004 election to date. (Candidates who wish to run by petition have until October 15 to submit their petitions.) The candidates are Renée Binder, M.D., of San Francisco, Jeffrey Geller, M.D, M.P.H., of Worcester, Mass., and Michael Vergare, M.D., of Philadelphia. Binder is chair of APA’s Committee on Judicial Action, Geller is a member of the Council on Social Issues and Public Psychiatry, and Vergare is chair of the Council on Member and District Branch Relations. All three also serve in the Assembly: Binder is the Area 6 representative, Geller is the Area 1 representative, and Vergare is a Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society representative.

In the race for member-in-training trustee-elect, John M. Kuzma, M.D., of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, will run against Daniel T. Mamah, M.D., of Washington University in St. Louis.

Two of APA’s seven Areas will elect a trustee this year. By press time only one candidate had been announced for Area 3 trustee: incumbent Roger Peele, M.D., of Gaithersburg, Md.

Vying for the position of Area 6 trustee are Barry Chaitin, M.D., of Newport Beach, Calif., and Thomas Ciesla, M.D., of Santa Monica, Calif. Chaitin is chair of APA’s Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing, and Ciesla is a Southern California Psychiatric Society representative to the APA Assembly.

Election ballots will be mailed to all voting members on January 5 and must be returned by February 5. Candidates’ biographies and statements will be published in the December 5 issue of Psychiatric News. ▪