Elayne Ansara, PharmD, BCPS, BCPP
AAPP Program Committee Member
Mental Health Clinical Pharmacist Practitioner
VISN23 Clinical Resource Hub
Indianapolis, Indiana
A burgeoning mental health crisis is evident in the United States, despite the country’s dedication of significant human resources and spending on mental health care and research. Effectively responding to this crisis is impeded by the dominant framing of mental ill health through the prism of diagnostic categories, leading to an excessive reliance on pharmacological interventions that are delivered by specialists. This crisis is further exacerbated by a scarcity of widespread promotive, preventive, and recovery-oriented strategies coupled with a failure to leverage diverse resources that may already be available within communities.
The AAPP 2024 Annual Meeting will feature a keystone session with a presentation from Dr. Vikram Patel who will be discussing how to transform our mental health care system by discussing innovative, evidence-based practices from low resource contexts in the Global South. These practices offer practical strategies to reimagine and transform the approach to mental health in our communities.
Specific objectives for Dr. Patel’s session include:
Vikram Patel is The Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. In addition to his role as department chair and his teaching commitments, Dr. Patel leads the Mental Health for All Lab at Harvard. His work has focused on the burden of mental health problems, their association with social disadvantage, and the use of community resources for their prevention and treatment. He is a Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences and member of the US National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Patel also co-led the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health & Sustainable Development and the Lancet-World Psychiatric Association Commission on Depression; he serves as co-chair of the Lancet Citizens Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System.
He has been awarded the Chalmers Medal (Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene); the Sarnat Prize (National Academy of Medicine); the Pardes Humanitarian Prize (the Brain and Behaviour Research Foundation); the Klerman Senior Investigator Prize (the Depression and Bipolar Disorder Alliance); an Honorary OBE (UK Government); and the John Dirk Canada Gairdner Award in Global Health. Dr. Patel has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Georgetown University, York University, Stellenbosch University, and the University of Amsterdam. He was listed in TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year in 2015.