I am truly honored to author my first column as the new President of CPNP. While I have served as President-Elect this past year, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support and confidence in me to serve on the CPNP leadership team and take on this position. I am incredibly humbled to help lead CPNP and I anticipate that we will enjoy many accomplishments as we work toward our goals this coming year! Throughout the next year I hope each of you continue to read The CPNP Perspective as I will highlight activities and announcements through this column over the year.
Let me introduce myself and provide some information on my background for your benefit as CPNP members. I am a graduate of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh PA where I received my BS and Pharm.D. I completed my residency at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy in Baltimore, MD where I was mentored by many Psychiatric Pharmacy greats such as Drs. Raymond Love, Judy Curtis, Jami Lingle Earnest, Bethany DiPaula and Mary Borovicka. I became Board Certified in Psychiatric Pharmacy in 1997 and have been a member of CPNP since 1998. I served on the Board of Directors of CPNP as Treasurer in 2006 and 2007 and have been on many committees, most recently completing a term on the Program Committee where I was Program Chair in 2014. I am a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Maryland (UMB) School of Medicine and Director of the Treatment Research Program at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. I have a unique practice as a psychiatric pharmacist which allows me to spend my time seeking NIH grants and running pharmacologic treatment trials in hopes of improving pharmacologic treatment options for people with schizophrenia and severe mental illness. This year marks my 20th anniversary in clinical trial research and I am proud to have presented many of our findings at CPNP meetings and to our membership.
Most importantly in this column I wanted to highlight the outgoing members of the Board of Directors members, Raymond C. Love, Robert Haight, Ann Richards and Sara Dugan all ended their service on June 30 of 2017. I have had the privilege of working with all of these members over the past few years and was lucky enough to witness first hand their dedication to the profession of psychiatric pharmacy and CPNP. I have appreciated their guidance, insight, expertise and efforts in advocacy. The time and effort they have given on behalf of the membership helps drive the continued success of our volunteer and member driven organization.
Additionally I would like to welcome new Board Members Amy Werremeyer, Benjamin Chavez and Megan Ehret. I look forward to continuing my work with our Past President Chris Thomas as well as Marshall Cates and Leigh Ann Nelson. We have many exciting ongoing initiatives including our new venture in government affairs with the hiring of District Policy Group as our government affairs consultants this past year. With their assistance, I have had the opportunity to participate in Hill Briefings, Congressional Visits, and Mental Health and Pharmacy Organization Leadership meetings to advocate for the CPNP and Psychiatric Pharmacy.
I am excited for this coming year when you will hear much more on CPNP’s efforts in advocacy and interprofessional activities! Making connections and networking is a cornerstone value for CPNP as members share ideas and create relationships that can help improve our practices and our profession. This issue of The CPNP Perspective features information on networking with peers and the value of CPNP communities. With the continued robust growth in CPNP and the many new attendees at the Annual Meeting in April 2017, I strongly recommend that all members network with colleagues and consider joining a community. Over the next year, communities are planning 29 lunch and learn webinars and 8 journal clubs. Read about the webinar series in this issue and make sure that you update your community preferences.
Lastly, I highly encourage members to reach out to me with any feedback, questions or comments. I can be reached at Dkelly@mrpc.umaryland.edu. I also encourage everyone to stay connected regularly through Facebook and Twitter (view all our social pages).
Looking forward to a great year for CPNP!
Deanna L. Kelly, PharmD., BCPP