Skip to Main Content

Bookman, Lee, Nunes, Salahou Honored with APAF Fellowships

June 03, 2024

Four Yale Department of Psychiatry residents are recent recipients of American Psychiatric Association Foundation (APAF) fellowships.

Caylan Bookman, MD, a second-year resident, and Abiba Salahou, MD, a first-year resident, have been selected as fellows in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Minority Fellowship Program (SAMHSA MFP).

Yang Jae Lee, MD, a third-year resident, has received the APA/APAF Diversity Leadership Fellowship. The APAF Leadership Fellowship Award was awarded to Julio Nunes, MD, a second-year resident.

The SAMHSA Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) provides a one-year fellowship to psychiatry residents who have demonstrated a strong commitment to addressing mental health disparities. Recipients of the SAMHSA MFP will receive mentorship from national leaders in psychiatry and receive a generous grant to fund their innovative capstone projects.

The APA/APAF Diversity Leadership Fellowship identifies and motivates minority psychiatry residents or those interested in minority and vulnerable populations who, through the experiential and training opportunities of the fellowship, will become well equipped to teach, administer, and provide culturally-competent, evidence-based mental health and substance abuse services to diverse minority groups and at-risk populations.

The APA/APAF Leadership Fellowship aims to develop national leaders in the field of organized psychiatry by offering psychiatry trainees opportunities to interact with national thought leaders in the field and to further develop their professional leadership skills, networks, and psychiatric experiences.

Caylan Bookman, MD

Minority mental health has been a passion for Bookman since his early work serving as a support for underserved children who carried psychiatric diagnoses in the foster care system. In medical school, this passion continued with his work on the leadership team of the school’s free psychiatric clinic dedicated to treating those who were uninsured.

Through opportunities such as becoming a REACH Scholar where he was able to train to work with racial and ethnic minoritized patients with substance use disorders, speaking at local community mental health fairs, and his lived experience, Bookman evinced his dedication to caring for the marginalized.

In addition to his strong clinical care, Bookman is working as a leader within the Connecticut Psychiatric Society’s Legislative Committee, was chosen to join the Yale Young Physician’s Leadership Curriculum, and was selected as an Elevate Med Scholar which all have further demonstrated his commitment to Health Justice and have shaped him into the fierce advocate for minority mental health he is today.

With the support of the SAMHSA MFP, Bookman’s project will explore cultural identity and ancestry with the hopes of connecting Black people, specifically those who are American Descendants of Slavery, to new parts of themselves. Bookman will develop a curriculum designed for a small group and witness how exploring identity, implementing ancestral cultural practices in one’s daily life, and building community impact the well-being of participants.

Yang Jae Lee, MD

Lee has had a decade of engagement with the Busoga Region, a rural area in Uganda. In 2018 he founded Empower Through Health, a 501(c)3 organization where he serves as executive director and chairperson. This non-profit provides medical care to a catchment area of 70,000 people and psychiatric care to over 400,000 people, while creating the Global Health Experiential Fellowship, which has had over 150 alumni consisting of medical students, masters students, and bachelor students from both Uganda and the United States. This is an opportunity to work collaboratively on a research project on an intercultural team while living in rural Uganda. Under his leadership, Empower Through Health has been able to establish an endowment fund to ensure sustainability.

At Yale, Lee's research focuses on two primary objectives: reducing the stigma associated with mental illness and developing robust systems of care by working with existing community structures to provide effective mental healthcare in rural areas of low-income countries. His work aims to enhance the well-being of marginalized communities.

For his research, Lee has been honored with the prestigious American Society for Clinical Investigation Emerging-Generation Award, as well as departmental honors such as the Lustman Award (twice) and the Detre Award.

As a Diversity Leadership Fellowship recipient, Lee will gain insights into APA/APAF governance, attend workshops at APA Annual Meetings, and access unique training opportunities.

Julio Nunes, MD

Nunes' two-year resident fellowship, for the 2024-26 academic years, aims to develop national leaders in psychiatry by offering trainees opportunities to interact with national thought leaders and further develop their professional leadership skills, networks, and psychiatric experiences.

Nunes has demonstrated his leadership skills through research and education. His work on the intersection of chronic pain, substance use disorders, and disparities has been published in numerous journals, including the American Journal of Psychiatry, the American Journal on Drug and Alcohol Abuse, and the American Journal on Addictions.

He has chaired workshops and presentations in various APA and AAAP Meetings and was the recipient of awards from the AAAP and NIDA. Nunes is also a mentor, having supported medical students through several publications and awards of their own. For his educational work, Nunes was recognized with the 2023 Department of Psychiatry Resident Teaching Award.

As a fellowship recipient, Nunes will gain an understanding of APA/APAF governance, attend workshops at APA Annual Meetings, and be exposed to training opportunities. Many APA/APAF Leadership Fellowship graduates have gone on to become nationally renowned psychiatrists, assuming leadership roles in APA/APAF organizations and other reputable organizations.

Abiba Salahou, MD

Salahou’s project will focus on addressing disparities in school mental health resources for marginalized youth. She plans to partner with local grassroots youth organizations and schools in both New Haven, CT, and Syracuse, NY, to create a mental health resource needs assessment for underserved schools and implement an after-school teen mental group that combines psychoeducation and expressive arts (especially creative writing) to explore topics such as racial socialization, acculturation stress, generational trauma, and identity.

Salahou has demonstrated her commitment to healthcare disparities and mental health advocacy through her volunteer work, community initiatives and scholarly activity. As a medical student, she created a “Call to Action Anti-racism Initiative” and taskforce at her medical school to improve the preclinical teaching on social determinants of health and minoritized patient populations.

Salahou uses writing as platform to advocate for marginalized communities. She has published her work in peer-reviewed journals and was selected as a 2023-2024 Doximity Op-Med Writing Fellow. She has presented her work at national conferences, including the Johns Hopkins Reckoning with Race and Racism in Academic Medicine Conference, and presented on the Black Youth Suicide Crisis and Racial Trauma at the 2023 and 2024 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) Annual Meetings, respectively.

Most recently, she participated in the Yale Child Study Center’s Inaugural Black Youth Mental Health Clinical Case Conference Series and completed the seven-month “Yale Young Physicians’ Leadership Curriculum” to expand her knowledge on physician advocacy and policy development.

Submitted by Christopher Gardner on June 03, 2024