Members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) are investing in the future of psychiatry through quality patient care and thought leadership, but did you know they are also investing in young academics interested in pursuing psychiatry? For five decades, APA has been a grantee of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Minority Fellowship (MFP). This program has provided a platform for many APA members to engage with and provide mentorship to these future leaders in psychiatry. Over the past two years, APA has introduced new pathways for future leaders: the Summer Medical Student Program (SMSP) and the Future Leaders of Psychiatry Program (FLIPP), which target interested medical students and undergraduates, respectively. These two components of SAMHSA MFP have had positive impact on more than 150 young academics.

In 2023, we recruited APA members from around the nation to be mentors for these undergraduate and medical students. Our participants specifically asked for psychiatrists who come from similar ethnic and cultural backgrounds - and many members answered the call, including Dr. Luis Torres, Dr. Jonathan Shepherd, and Dr. Aashima Sarin. In 2024, we added talks on reproductive (by Dr. Jennifer Okwerekwu), correctional (by Jerome Greenfield), and emergency (by Meaghan Schott) psychiatry to SMSP based on feedback from our cohorts.

Additionally, this year, we piloted our Future Leaders Academy for our undergraduate program (Future Leaders in Psychiatry Program – FLIPP) in the greater Los Angeles area. This academy featured inspirational presentations by Drs. Eraka Bath, Daniel Cho, Lisa Fortuna, Ippolytos Kalofonos, Sheryl Kataoka, and Peter Ureste. Students had the opportunity to share lunch with Dr. Deborah Deas, the Mark and Pam Rubin dean of the School of Medicine, vice chancellor for health sciences and distinguished professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Riverside. The APA SAMHSA MFP components are working to ensure that a pathway is built to bring awareness and education to future psychiatrists who can contribute to reducing mental health disparities and improving behavioral health outcomes for underserved racial and ethnic populations.

We invite all APA members that wish to support our SAMHSA MFP components (psychiatry fellows, medical students and undergraduates) to become a program speaker. Please click here to express your interest. We would like to thank the APA members and partners that delivered sessions and were mentors to future leaders. Together we can achieve mental health equity by investing in our future leaders of psychiatry.