Successes and Challenges of State-Funded Perinatal Psychiatry Access Programs - October 12

Recorded On: 10/12/2023

This is part of the AAMC Maternal Mental Health Learning Series.

Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders are commonly underdiagnosed and undertreated. Primary care, obstetric, and other perinatal care professionals often have questions on how to evaluate, initiate, and follow-up on treatment for perinatal mental health and substance use disorders. State-funded perinatal psychiatry access programs like MCPAP for Moms, Project TEACH NY, and NC Maternal Mental Health MATTERS are three programs affiliated and supported by academic medical centers that are staffed weekdays from 9a-5p by perinatal psychiatrists who offer training, consultation, resources, and referrals to build the capacity of perinatal care professionals to screen, assess, and treat perinatal mental health and substance use disorders. The three programs serve different patient populations and have structural and funding differences. This webinar will focus on the successes, challenges such as barriers to care, and opportunities, as well as how the state-funded access programs began. A key takeaway from this webinar will be for providers to understand how these programs can help them in their practice. Data and outcomes metrics for these programs will also be discussed, including approaches to understanding provider utilization.

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Nancy Byatt, DO, MS, MBA, DFAPA, FACLP

Executive Director, Lifeline for Families Center and Lifeline for Moms Program
Professor of of Psychiatry, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Population & Quantitative Health Sciences Medical Director of Research and Evaluation, MCPAP for Moms

Nancy Byatt, DO, MS, MBA, DFAPA, FACLP, is a Tenured Professor at UMass Chan Medical School, perinatal psychiatrist, and physician-scientist focused on improving systems of care to promote the mental health of parents and children. She developed the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program (MCPAP) for Moms MAP for Moms , now a national model for perinatal mental health care.  She is the Founding Executive Director of the Lifeline for Families Center and Lifeline for Moms Program at UMass Chan Medical School. Her research uses implementation science methods to design, implement, and evaluate scalable approaches for improving parental and child mental health services and outcomes. With over ten years of federal funding, her research had led to over 90 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.

Kristina Deligiannidis, MD

Director, Women’s Behavioral Health, Zucker Hillside Hospital, Northwell Health
Medical Director, Reproductive Psychiatry, Project TEACH NY
Professor of Psychiatry, Molecular Medicine and Obstetrics & Gynecology, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell
Professor, Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Northwell Health Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School

Dr. Kristina Deligiannidis is the Director of Women’s Behavioral Health at Zucker Hillside Hospital, Northwell Health and a Professor of Psychiatry, Molecular Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.  As Director, she leads a clinical/translational research program and advises on policies and services promoting women’s behavioral health at Northwell Health, the largest health system in NY state.  Dr. Deligiannidis additionally serves as the Medical Director for Reproductive Psychiatry for the perinatal psychiatry access program, Project TEACH, funded by the NY State Office of Mental Health.  For Project TEACH, Dr. Deligiannidis leads a team of 16 reproductive psychiatrists/psychologists to provide education and phone consultation to maternal health clinicians on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, across all 62 counties of NY. As a reproductive psychiatrist, she has expertise in treating women with mood and anxiety disorders linked to the menstrual cycle, perinatal and perimenopausal periods.

Dr. Deligiannidis is a nationally recognized leader in the field of perinatal depression and in novel therapeutics research. Her research program includes a focus in psychoneuroendocrinology, particularly neurosteroids and hormones, and multimodal neuroimaging in women’s behavioral health. Dr. Deligiannidis’s research is supported by NIH, foundation and industry funding, including prestigious K23 and R01 grants. Her efforts have been nationally recognized with many awards for research and medical student and resident teaching.  Her recent publications have been in high impact journals including the Lancet, Lancet Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, Am. J. of Psychiatry, Neuropsychopharmacology and Psychoneuroendocrinology. Her research has been covered by major media outlets, including CNN, the Associated Press, NPR, the Boston Globe, Boston and New York ABC and CBS News, Time Magazine, Good Morning America and others.

Dr. Deligiannidis actively contributes to national scientific committees and gives scientific presentations nationally and internationally. She is a past Council member of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, a past Board member for the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology and currently is a full member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology where she serves on several committees.  Dr. Deligiannidis also serves as a reviewer on over 20 scientific journals and on Editorial Boards of national and international journals.  She serves as a federal grant reviewer for the Center for Scientific Review at NIH. Locally she serves on steering committees in both the Departments of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Psychiatry at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and Zucker Hillside Hospital and at the Katz Institute for Women’s Health on Long Island.  She additionally serves on Faculty Council and the Zucker Women in Medicine and Science (ZWIMS) Gender and Equity committee at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.

Dr. Deligiannidis received her medical degree from and completed her psychiatry residency and chief residency in psychopharmacology research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  Prior to and during medical school she trained in neuroscience research at the National Institutes of Health. After residency she completed additional research training in behavioral endocrinology and experimental therapeutics at the NIH and in neuroimaging at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH.

Mary Kimmel, MD

Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Director, Perinatal Psychiatry Program
Medical Director, NC Maternal Mental Health MATTERS Program

Mary Kimmel, MD is an Assistant Professor in the tenure track in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC).  In her first five years at UNC, she served as Medical Director for the UNC Perinatal Psychiatric Inpatient Unit, a national referral center for treatment-resistant perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and postpartum psychosis. Dr. Kimmel in partnership with North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, obtained United States Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) funding and developed the NC Maternal Mental Health MATTERS program, a statewide consultation program providing support to any provider screening, assessing and treating mental health needs of pregnant, postpartum or early parenting individual; continuing to serve as NC MATTERS Medical Director. Her research is focused on improving screening and assessment in order to improve personalization of treatment through the blending of patient’s history, self-reported symptoms, and biomarkers. Her biomarker work strives to better understand the role of the microbiome, immune system, and stress on the current and future mental health of the parent-child dyad.

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