Five Yale Department of Psychiatry residents have been awarded competitive fellowships through the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and American Psychiatric Association Foundation (APAF).
Hana Ali, MD, (PGY-2); Stefanie Gillson, MD, (PGY-2); and Sofia Noori, MD, MPH, (PGY-2) were awarded APA/APAF Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Funded Minority Fellowships for the 2019-2020 academic years. They will each receive about $25,000 in funding to be used toward a project and related expenses.
Jessica Chaffkin, MD, (PGY-2) and Justin Ayankola, MD, (PGY-2) have been awarded the APA/APAF Leadership Fellowship and APA/APAF Diversity Leadership Fellowship, respectively, for the 2019-2021 academic years. The fellowships will pay for travel and hotel expenses for the 2019 and 2020 September Components Meetings and All Fellows’ Orientation as well as the 2019 and 2020 Annual Meetings. As fellows, Chaffkin and Ayankola will participate on the APA Council.
Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale and Early Career Psychiatrist Trustee-at-Large for the APA Board of Trustees, congratulated the five doctors on their awards. Jordan is a past recipient of two fellowships through APA.
“I intimately understand and can attest to the commitment APA and SAMHSA have to developing diverse leaders in the field of psychiatry,” Jordan said. “In line with the vision of Yale Psychiatry developing diverse leaders of the 21st century, I am ecstatic that five of our residents have been awarded such illustrious fellowship positions. Yale has a strong commitment to the APA which will undoubtedly only continue to be strengthened given our continuous involvement in the organization. This is evident through the leadership of these strong fellows. Please join me in acknowledging this momentous occasion.”
Ali has a research interest in the impact of neighborhoods and social environments on mental health outcomes. For her project, she proposes to help create community-led spaces with integrated physical and mental health programming in New Haven. “I have talked at length with Hana about the community group she has joined and helped to foster, and I am so impressed with the potential of this group to have significant impact on issues of social justice and health equity,” wrote Robert Rohrbaugh, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Residency Program Director, in nominating Ali for the fellowship.
In line with the vision of Yale Psychiatry developing diverse leaders of the 21st century, I am ecstatic that five of our residents have been awarded such illustrious fellowship positions.
Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine
Consistent with her long-term goal of addressing disparities in mental health outcomes for Native American communities, Gillson will spend several weeks at a time throughout the next two years working with the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in Arizona on substance use prevention in adolescents as well as continue her community-based research focusing on historical trauma with tribes in the Midwest. "During the next few years, she will devote time to understanding community values and conduct community needs assessments,” Rohrbaugh wrote. “She will then use these data to develop interventions that are consistent with community values and that focus on cultural strengths and resiliencies.”
Noori hopes to use the fellowship to advance gender equity in psychiatry. She founded the Women's Mental Health interest group this Spring which is organizing a women's mental health conference in October 2019 and has helped to establish a women's house staff association for residents in all specialties. She also co-leads the Women in Psychiatry group, organizing mentoring lunches and talks to advance the careers of dozens of women in the department. “We are impressed by her amazing productivity and the extraordinary quality of her work,” Rohrbaugh wrote. “During her time with us, we have been impressed by how much she has already enriched both our department and the broader community.”
Chaffkin demonstrated leadership in a variety of programs before medical school. She led a tutoring program for incarcerated men, coordinated after-school programming for adjudicated youth, and created an Alternative Spring Break program that gave college students an in-depth look at incarceration in the United States. At Yale she is co-president of the Psychiatry Residents’ Association and serves as an advocate for current residents. “On behalf of the residents, Dr. Chaffkin has led the charge in implementing improved education around a safe and efficient handoff process for the psychiatry clinical units, has made improvements to the call rooms, and created tools that will provide for better institutional memory of policies and procedures,” Rohrbaugh wrote.
Ayankola was recommended for his fellowship because of his long-standing dedication to addressing disparities in medicine, Rohrbaugh wrote. “During his inpatient adolescent psychiatry rotation, Justin was struck by the fact that family meetings tended to be scheduled during typical business hours when the physicians were on the unit. He immediately noticed that this created an obstacle for single parent and low socioeconomic status families for whom this might be disproportionately challenging. Justin immediately set about working with hospital leadership to develop a psychoeducation program that could be administered off-hours to these families, thereby ensuring that they receive the same high-quality care as the other patients on the unit.”