March 8 is the International Day of the Woman, a worldwide celebration of women’s achievements, and an opportunity to boost awareness of the struggle for gender equality. This year, APA is pleased to mark the occasion by calling attention to the past and present winners of the APA Assembly Award for Excellence in Service and Advocacy. This award, which originated in 2016, is presented by the Women of the Assembly to a woman psychiatrist in the APA whose career has demonstrated excellence in serving and advocating for communities which are underserved.

In 2021, the Assembly is presenting the award to Pam Montano Arteaga, M.D., for her outstanding bilingual work to increase health care access to the Latinx community in New York City through New York Health and Hospitals programs. Dr. Montano Arteaga is clinical assistant professor of Psychiatry at New York University Medical School and the director of the Latino Bicultural Clinic at Gouverneur Health/NYC Health + Hospitals and the chair of the Structural Cultural Competence Committee at the same department. Through her many leadership positions, she advocates for improving the access and quality of care for the Latinx population and other minority groups. Among her numerous contributions to this community, she was one of the co-authors of the APA toolkit on treating undocumented immigrant populations.

Previous winners of the Assembly Award for Excellence in Service and Advocacy include:

• 2016:  Mary Roessel, M.D. – for her outstanding work on the mental health of Indigenous peoples of the Southwestern U.S., primarily with members of her native Navajo Nation.
• 2017:  Ellen Haller, M.D. – for her outstanding work developing mental health services for underserved members of the LGBTQ+ communities in San Francisco.
• 2018: Denese Shervington, M.D., M.P.H. – for her outstanding work with the underserved African American community in New Orleans on post disaster mental health following Hurricane Katrina.
• 2019:  Monica Taylor-Desir, M.D., M.P.H. – for her outstanding work on suicide prevention and mental health care of Indigenous peoples in North Dakota and Arizona.
• 2020: Jemima Kankam, M.D. – for her outstanding work providing mental health advocacy for the underserved African American community in Baltimore and other Maryland communities.

Learn more about International Women’s Day.

To join the conversation on social media, use the hashtag #IWD2021.