EDI News & Op-Eds

Starting as a grassroots project, Neurodiversity Connections aims to help neurodivergent students access mental health care, academic resources and other relevant materials through existing organizations on campus. Duke Psychiatry's Tara Chandrasekhar, MD, is one of the co-founders of the group.

In this opinion piece published in Modern Healthcare, Kathryn Dickerson, PhD, and Kafui Dzirasa, MD, PhD, of Duke Psychiatry and Tracie Locklear, PhD, of North Carolina Central University, explain how companies and universities can partner to bring more people of color into careers in medical research.

Ensuring equity in research is a critical step in advancing health equity. In this perspective published in the journal "Health Equity," the authors—including Duke Psychiatry's Dane Whicker, PhD, and colleagues from the Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute and North Carolina Central University—introduce a guiding framework for advancing racial equity in research processes, environments, and among the research workforce.

Latinx children are disproportionately impacted by mental health care inequities, including for ADHD. To help address this issue locally, a team of ADHD researchers and clinicians from Duke Psychiatry is partnering with staff from El Futuro—a non-profit outpatient clinic that provides comprehensive mental health services for Latinx families—to develop a culturally-adapted approach that enhances existing ADHD treatment for Latinx families in the Durham community. 

Karim Abdelaal, a PhD student in neurobiology, has been awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study. The fellowship program aims to build a community committed to advancing science through diversity and inclusion. Duke Psychiatry's Kafui Dzirasa, MD, PhD, is Abdelaal’s advisor.

In honor of National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month—also known now as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) Mental Health Month—Duke Psychiatry's Jane Gagliardi, MD, MHS, shares a brief summary of racism in mental health care and talks with Spencer Simon, a physician assistant who provides overnight psychiatric care in the Duke University Hospital Emergency Department, about his work in behavioral health.

The Duke School of Medicine's Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) spoke with EDI delegate Annise Weaver, MSEd, CRC, Manager of Education & Outreach of NC-PAL and Associate Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Weaver shared how last year’s COST letter from Black faculty inspired her to help her Black colleagues at Duke and how her role as Associate Director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion complements her other duties within the department.

Understanding intersecting cultural identities — and providing care that respects and affirms those identities — is at the heart of Tyson Pankey’s work as a clinician, educator, and researcher. Pankey, who joined the Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences faculty in September 2021, wants to help flip the script on how health care providers talk to and care for people in the LGBTQ+ community.

Over the past year, leaders from the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development, Office for Institutional Equity, Faculty Advancement, and Disability Management have met with Duke students and team members from the university and health system to discuss how to better ​​​support inclusion and equity efforts related to neurodiversity across the Duke campus.

In an op-ed published on the North Carolina Psychiatric Association website, Duke internal medicine-psychiatry resident Colin Smith, MD, highlights the need for systemic changes to achieve racial health equity in psychiatry.