During the past decade or more, there has been a rapid evolution of mental health services and treatment technologies, shifting psychiatric epidemiology, changes in public behavioral health policy, and increased understanding in medicine regarding approaches to clinical work that focus on patient-centeredness. These contemporary issues need to be articulated in a comprehensive format. The American Association of Community Psychiatrists (AACP), a professional organization internationally recognized as holding the greatest concentration of expertise in the field, has launched a methodical process to create a competency certification in community psychiatry. As a reference for a certification examination, that effort will benefit enormously from a comprehensive handbook on the subject.
About the Author: Wesley E. Sowers, MD is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and is the Director of the Center for Public Service Psychiatry and its associated Fellowship Program at Western Psychiatric Hospital. He is board certified in Adult Psychiatry with subspecialty certifications in Addiction, Administrative and Community Psychiatry. He is a Past President of the American Association for Community Psychiatry and has served on the Board of Directors of that organization since 1988. He has also been on the Board of the American Association of Psychiatric Administrators since 1999. He has served as Co-Chair of the Mental Health Services Committee of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry since 2009. From 2008 to 2016 he was co-director of the SAMHSA sponsored Recovery to Practice curriculum development project for psychiatry.
Dr. Sowers is a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University Medical School. He completed residencies at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry in New York City. Clinically, he has extensive experience in the provision of treatment and services to special populations such as homeless men and women, people with criminal records, LGBTQ individuals, and people with substance use disorders. He has published several articles, editorials, and book chapters on topics related to his clinical activities and health care systems management. He was the chief architect of the Level of Care Utilization System (LOCUS) and its counterpart for children and adolescents (CALOCUS), instruments widely used to guide service intensity decisions. Hunter L. McQuistion, MD is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine and Senior Attending Psychiatrist at NYU Langone Health. He is Medical Director of the SAMHSA-funded Engagement, Treatment, and Recovery (EnTRy) Program at Family Health Centers at NYU Langone, which provides FQHC-based multidisciplinary and recovery-oriented services to underserved Brooklyn residents experiencing serious mental health challenges. He recently completed a successful and satisfying stewardship as Chief of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health at NYC Health+HospitalsGothamGouverneur. Among other roles in systems management and clinical policy, Dr. McQuistion has also served at a high level in the City of New York Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.
As an academic community psychiatrist, he has focused much of his career on program development and scholarship concerning people who experience homelessness and mental illnesses, but has also turned energies to other underserved populations, including interest in efforts on racial and ethnic issues as related to clinical competencies. Spanning roles in advocacy, administration, epidemiological and services research, and education, Dr. McQuistion has published and presented widely. He offers program and educational consultation as well as providing direct clinical services. Among other accomplishments, Dr. McQuistion is a Past President of the American Association for Community Psychiatry, is recognized as an Exemplary Psychiatrist by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, and a member of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry.
Jules M. Ranz, MD is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia. He was director of the Public Psychiatry Fellowship at NYS Psychiatric Institute/Columbia University Medical Center from 1992 to 2017 and continues as a mentor to many of the over 300 psychiatrists who completed the fellowship. The Public Psychiatry Fellowship is generally acknowledged to be the premier program of its kind in the country, supported by three published surveys of its alumni. In the past fifteen years, over twenty other public/community psychiatry fellowships have been created, many modeled on the Columbia program as described in "Core Elements of a Public Psychiatry Fellowship" published in 2008. During this time Dr. Ranz has created a network of directors of these programs that led to the publication of five articles about that network, as well as six articles about individual fellowships in that network.
Dr. Ranz was principal author of a 2006 published article written by the Mental Health Services Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, utilizing data to demonstrate that early and mid-career psychiatrists spend more time in publicly-funded organizational settings than in solo office practice. A follow up paper described a 12 site study conducted by Dr. Ranz and that same committee: "A Four Factor Model of Systems- Based Practices in Psychiatry" published in 2012. In recognition of his long career as a public psychiatry educator, Dr. Ranz received the 2013 APA/NIMH Vestermark Psychiatry Educator Award. Following his semiretirement from the Columbia Fellowship, Dr. Ranz helped to create a Community Psychiatry Nurse Practitioner fellowship at a Federally Qualified Health Center, which was described in a 2021 publication in Psychiatric Services. He is continuing to serve as an advocate for bringing psychiatric nurse practitioners and psychiatrists together to collaborate on organizational, academic and advocacy strategies.
Jacqueline Maus Feldman, MD is a Professor Emerita with the School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurobiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She retired in July 2014, as the Patrick H. Linton Professor, the Medical Director of the UAB Community Psychiatry Program, the Executive Director of the UAB Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center, the Director of the Division of Public Psychiatry, and the Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs. She continues to provide clinical and administrative services for the department, has consulted with Alabama Medicaid, and serves as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) national Associate Medical Director. She has also served as the federal court monitor for women's mental health in the Alabama Department of Corrections and participated with the Department of Justice in its investigation of Georgia State Hospitals. She has also served on numerous national and regional planning and review committees, is a Past-President of the Alabama Psychiatric Physicians Association, Past President of the American Association for Community Psychiatry and has served on the Board of the American Psychiatric Foundation, as well as the Alabama NAMI Board. She has served on the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting Scientific Program Committee as member and Chair. Her areas of research included effectiveness of ACT, dual diagnosis, jail diversion, and treatment of perinatal depression. She has published and spoken extensively on affective disorders, schizophrenia, dual diagnosis, public policy development, advocacy, mental health and criminal justice, and recovery, and is the immediate past Editor-In-Chief of the Community Mental Health Journal.
Dr. Feldman has been listed numerous times in "Best Doctors in America" and named by NAMI three times as an Exemplary Psychiatrist.
Patrick S. Runnels, MD, MBA serves as both Chief Medical Officer of Population Health and Vice Chair of Psychiatry for University Hospitals in Cleveland. Additionally, he holds an academic appointment as Professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where he founded the Public and Community Psychiatry Fellowship. He was the founding chair and remains an active member The National Council on Mental Wellness Medical Director Institute. He has served in the past on the Board of Trustees for the American Psychiatric Association, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (Ohio Chapter), and the American Association for Community Psychiatry. He has also served as Chair of the Council on Advocacy and Government Relations for the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Runnels received his medical degree from the University of Missouri, Columbia; had his psychiatric residency at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, then completed the Columbia University's Fellowship in Public Psychiatry. He received his Executive MBA at Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management. He has published several articles, editorials, and book chapters, as well as given numerous national talks and presentations in the areas of healthcare leadership and clinical transformation.
