Candidate for 2025 Area 3 Trustee

Biography

Dr. Kenneth Certa is the Director of Adult Acute Psychiatric Services at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. He works clinically in emergency room psychiatry consultation and inpatient psychiatric care. He served as the residency program director at Jefferson for fourteen years.

His work in emergency psychiatry led to his involvement in organized medicine and advocacy. Many individuals with serious mental illness were at risk of catastrophic outcomes due to lack of available resources, uneven training of emergency medical and law enforcement personnel, and conflicting interpretations of laws governing mental health commitment.

He has served on the board of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and various offices in the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society. He represented Philadelphia at the House of Delegates of the Pennsylvania Medical Society for several years, and now represents psychiatry there.

Dr. Certa advocated successfully for a slotted seat for psychiatry on the board of PAMED. There is no health without mental health, and the House of Delegates agreed that the presence of psychiatry on the PAMED board would help the medical society, especially concerning advocacy. He served as the first Psychiatry trustee for ten years.

He served in the Assembly of the APA representing Pennsylvania and was elected to the Board of the APA. He currently serves as parliamentarian for the Board.

During his tenure on the PAMED board, he was named to the delegation from the American Psychiatric Association to the AMA House of Delegates. He has served there for the past twenty years and is currently the Senior delegate from the APA to the AMA HOD. The APA-AMA delegation has been successful in helping rightly align AMA policies on parity, querying of past psychiatric treatment for applicants for medical licensure, and more recently advocating for schools to allow students to carry opioid reversal agents (eg Narcan.)

He has chaired the government relations committee of the Pennsylvania Psychiatric society for over thirty years and has drafted letters and testified on numerous issues concerning behavioral health. Complex issues involve the standards for involuntary psychiatric commitment, reporting of committed individuals to the state police and national data base for background checks, efforts to limit access to guns by individuals who pose a risk for harm to self or others, improving access to mental health care, increasing the size and diversity of the psychiatric workforce, and safeguarding privacy while providing clinicians with necessary mental health history. This year, the debate over expansion of prescribing privileges to psychologists has been fierce, and has required much strategy and work. He serves on the APA-PAC board, and chairs the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society PAC.

Education

• Bachelor of Science, Penn State University Park
• Doctor of Medicine, Jefferson (now Sidney Kimmel) Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University
• Residency, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital

Awards and Honors

• Cristol Award for services to the profession, Philadelphia County Medical Society (2022)
• R. William Alexander Award for physician involvement in the political process, Pennsylvania Medical Society Political Action Committee (2012)
• American Psychiatric Association 2009 Newsletter of the Year Award - Best Editorial. Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society Newsletter
• Exemplary Psychiatrist Award, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, awarded San Diego (2007)
• Presidential Award, Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society (2006)
• Distinguished Fellow, American Psychiatric Association (2003)