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Past President’s Message (2019-2020)

Past President’s Message – 2019-2020

Meena Ramani

Dear Friends,

My name is Meena Ramani (aka Meenatchi Ramani). I would like to tell you all how honored I am to be able to serve as the new IAPA President. In following Dr. Dilip Patel and other past Presidents, I hope that I will be able to guide the IAPA into the future with thoughtful planning and execution. We have supportive members, vibrant chapters and guidance from earlier IAPA architects — all of whom are dedicated to reaching our IAPA goals for the future.

I’ve had the privilege of being a member of the IAPA since my residency days. Over the past 25 years, IAPA has provided me the good fortune of meeting many of its founding mothers and fathers, which has been a rich and rewarding experience. During the past 8 years, I have served as an IAPA councilor, Treasurer, Secretary and President-elect. This has given me the opportunity to meet, interact and work with many of you on a variety of projects. I must say, the IAPA has given me the pleasure of working with some of the most decent, kind-hearted, warm, generous, hard-working, accomplished yet humble people who devote themselves to our organization to meet the needs of our members and foster professional growth.

Goals for my Presidency will be based on the mission and vision of the founding fathers of the IAPA: to pursue learning and research to address bicultural mental health needs of the IndoAmerican communities and to enhance professional and social cohesiveness among its members.

My first goal is to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues. As a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist who treats children and families of Indian origin, I have seen too many tragedies due to stigma attached to mental illness. Community education is essential to reduce the stigma attached to mental health problems. While our community focuses on academic achievement and family values that promotes healthy competition, mental health issues are frequently ignored. After all, denial is a powerful defense. Early intervention is key and this can only occur with education for the IndoAmerican population.

My second goal is to enhance IAPA membership, especially in first generation psychiatrists who speak a slightly different language from many of us who immigrated from India. I would not wish for anyone to take offense but the future of the IAPA will be determined by our children and how the IAPA can meet their needs as psychiatrists dealing with the many layers of bicultural identity.

A third goal specific to the IAPA’s role as the largest minority organization in the APA, is to strengthen our relationship with the APA and with Indian sister organizations throughout the world. 

I would like to thank the members of the EC, Extended EC, BOT and the local chapters who have all participated in building the IAPA into the strong, dynamic organization we have today. Past IAPA leaders have left me with big shoes to fill, but I am confident that with teamwork and guidance from our Board of Trustees, we can meet the challenges ahead. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to serve you.

 

Sincerely,

Meena Ramani, MD, DFAPA, DFAACAP, FAAP 

President, IAPA

 

President (2018 – 2019)

 

Mid-Term Report – August 2018

 

Dear IAPA members,

It is my pleasure to submit this midterm report of my Presidency and express my gratitude.

With many months of advance planning IAPA Leadership team (Extended EC and BOT members) was able to have very successful event of Annual Scientific/Educational session and Awards Banquet Dinner/Business Meeting in New York on May 6th 2018.

First of all, I want to thank all Extended EC members and current and past BOT members as well as many others who have helped to make this event go smoothly with their attention to all details.

 
Join me again in congratulating our awardees for this year.
  • Dr. Rameshwari Tumuluru of University of Pittsburgh as Outstanding Academician Awardee
  • Dr. Piyush Patel of Georgia as Outstanding Service Awardee
  • Dr. Prabir Mullick of Pittsburgh as Outstanding Public Sector Awardee
  • Dr. Jai Gandhi of University of Washington, Seattle as Outstanding Resident Awardee
  • Florida Chapter as Outstanding Chapter AwardeeI want to thank all the award committee members for their service to IAPA.I want to thank Judges of our Resident/Fellow/ECP Poster session. Dr. Nalini Juthani, Dr. Vani Rao and Dr. Anand Pandurangi who took time out by talking with participant for not only judging but also helping and encouraging them to further their pursuance of excellence in the field.Congratulation to Dr. Pankaj Manocha of Bronx Lebanon, New York for 1st place, Dr. Simran Brar of Morehouse, Georgia for 2nd place and Dr. Mihir Upadhyaya of Bronx Lebanon, New York for 3rd Place in Poster Presentation.I want to thank all the participants in Poster Presentation and our young leadership of Dr. Manan Shah, Dr. Tanuja Gandhi and Dr. Simran Brar for encouraging and actively seeking participation from Residents, Fellows and Early Carrier Psychiatrists in Poster Presentation.I want to congratulate Dr. Anup Sharma for his poster presentation and fulfilling requirement for completion to secure second half of BOT award from 2014.I want to thank Dr. Tumuluru for her presentation and other Speakers and Participants in Educational session “Societal Challenges—Current and Future, Psychiatric Prospective”. Dr. George Mathews, Dr. Bhagirathy Sahasranaman, Dr. Nina Agrawal, Dr. Vasudev Makhija and Panelist Dr. Rama Rao Gogineni who all brought in interesting presentation on our theme session with meI want to thank Dr. Meena Ramani, Dr. Bhagirathy Sahasranaman, Dr. Manoj Shah and Dr. Simran Brar as well as Ms. Anita Amin for working tirelessly with Hilton Staff in Securing venue, assuring setup and IAPA Goody bags.I also want to thank both Dr. Manan Shah and Dr. Amit Chopra for getting Brochure ready for the Event.Our Financial status has been strong and thanks to our Treasurer, Dr. Bhagirathy Sahasranaman who has worked hard and was able to bring more sponsors for the event, though PRMS, our Platinum Sponsor for many years have been unwavering in their support.I want to also thank all our sponsors, PRMS, Neurocrine and Otsuka, as without their sponsorship we will have difficult time balancing our books.Our Banquet Dinner/Awards Ceremony/Business meeting was well attended in Utsav Restaurant. Food was excellent and as a new feature during Dinner, with the help of sponsor, we had excellent short presentation on disease based topic of Tardive Dyskinesia by our own Dr. Cherian Verghese.I want to thank our Special Guest and Attendees, Dr. Saul Levine Medical Director and CEO of APA and Dr. Ajit Bhide, President of Indian Psychiatric Society. I was happy to see many of our leaders from previous years in attendance as well as many second generation (Children of IAPA members) members of IAPA. Thank you Dr. Dilip Jeste and Dr. Sonali Jeste for you continued support. Our ambassador of good will Mr. Anwar Siddiqui was in attendance and thank you Anwar. We had many other reasons to celebrate during banquet dinner Like Dr. Seeth Vivek was elected to be Recorder of APA Assembly. We already have Dr. Ramaswamy Viswanathan as M/UR Trustee on BOT of APA, as well as Dr. Tanuja Gandhi as Resident-Fellow Member Trustee in APA. Our seasoned senior members remains inspiring for many other capable IAPA members to contribute to APA in fields like Scientific Program committee and continues to provide role model by leading different caucuses at APA (like Dr. Rajesh Tampi and Dr. Nyapati Rao of IMG caucus) Thank you all Senior members who have been bagging many different prestigious awards from APA for being there to inspire and encourage others for such role with APA. I am sure that many of you see value in establishing Professional and Social networking during our Banquet Dinner/Award Ceremony as evident by increasing number of attendance. For me our banquet dinner was like a family reunion. Since we had sitting limitation for the event, I apologize to some that wanted to do onsite registration for dinner, but could not be accommodated. Hopefully in future will have every one as preregister so we can minimize disappointment at last minute.I want to thank Utsav Restaurant staff and Mrs. Nandita Khanna for all arrangements for banquet Dinner. 

     

    Changing the topic, I want to bring up opportunity to the attention of our membership. Like every year IAPA has been invited to participate in ANCIPS (Annual National Conference of Indian Psychiatric Society) in Lucknow, India from 31st January to 3rd February 2019. Dr. Rajiv Tandon and Dr. Anand Pandurangi who have been IAPA Liaison and Coordinators for International Organizations are putting together a symposium by IAPA during ANCIPS. Dr. Rudra Prakash, our BOT and Past President of IAPA is from King George Medical University, Lucknow is also joining Dr. Tandon and Dr. Pandurangi as the meeting is in Lucknow. Current Georgia chapter president is also from King George Medical University and in all likelihood she may join the team. IAPA Liaison and leadership will be happy to include and help you, if you are in academia, or research or in clinical practice and have desire to participate in presentation/Symposium during ANCIPS and if you are going to India during that time frame anyway, kindly send me an email with your C.V. and your interest in topic by August 30th, 2018 and I will forward that to Dr. Tandon and will be in touch with you. If you have any questions related to finances/expense please let me know.

    I recently attended AAPI annual convention in Columbus, Ohio from July 4th to 8th of 2018. I was very happy to see very well planned event by chairman of convention, Dr. John Johnson, who is IAPA member and Psychiatrist as well as Dr. Gautam Samadder, President of AAPI. Congratulation to Dr. Johnson and team for excellent planning of the event. My congratulation to Dr. Naresh Parikh who is incoming President of AAPI. Indo-America Psychiatric Association has been Patron Member of AAPI and President of IAPA represents in Governing Body of AAPI.

    Other event coming up is AAPI 12th Global Health Care Summit in Bombay (Mumbai) from 28th till 30th December 2018. Again AAPI president, Dr. Naresh Parikh has asked me as IAPA president to participate in it with Psychiatric Panel of about 4 doctors who will pick and prepare topic for presentation/Discussion during this health summit. If any of you are going to be in India during the time frame and want to give me helping hand, please send me email. If you have any questions regarding it send me email.

    I want to thank Dr. Lily Arora for being an editor of our Newsletter since its inception of new online version. I appreciate her services as Editor and want to welcome new team to replace her as she pursues her other facets of professional life. Dr. Arora had expressed desire to have her be relieved as editor of newsletter earlier to IAPA leadership. Dr. Manan Shah and Dr. Simran Brar will replace her as editor and I know Lily will continue to support new Team of Editors for our newsletter. Please join me in wishing Dr. Arora best in her continued pursuance of excellence in her professional life. Her establishment of the newsletter as first Editor will continue to serve IAPA for long time.

    Our Alabama, Pittsburgh and Florida chapters now have new Presidents and I welcome them to new leadership position.

    On home and Office front we now have new logo and banner design that received overwhelming welcome during our annual meeting. I thank you all for your encouraging words.

    I will continue to make improvement in our website with your input. I want to thank our Webmaster Kiran for facilitating online event registration as well as making it more user friendly.

    I continue to enjoy guidance, advice, constructive criticism and support from all of you and especially BOT chair Dr. Asha Mishra.

    Finally I want to thank you all, Our IAPA members, as I exist and do what I do because of your trust and support. I want to apologize to anyone that I did not recognize and thanked by name and again will welcome your comments, criticism, support and suggestions that can lead our Association on higher level of serving our membership and society.

    We will be posting photographs of Annual meeting soon on our website, so visit our website in 2-3 weeks again to view photos.

    Sincere Regards,Dilipkumar Patel, M.D., DLFAPAPresident, Indo-American Psychiatric Association

 
 
 
 
President’s Message – October 2017
 
 
Dear IAPA members,
 
It is my pleasure and honor to serve as your President for the 2017-2019 year. I know that with the assumption of this position, I also take responsibility to further the cause of our association and to promote our association’s goals and objectives. With my extended executive committee and board of trustees, I will provide leadership to our organization and move it forward to meet the needs of our members and professional society in an ever-changing political environment as well as in uncertainties of mental health treatment financing and the growing substance abuse crisis globally.
 
To introduce myself, I gained tremendous experience from my more than 25 years’ work with different non-profit community and professional organizations. I have worked with and practiced in community service areas of state hospital psychiatry and correctional psychiatry, with a teaching affiliation with the Morehouse School of Medicine as an assistant clinical professor in Department of Psychiatry. My modus operandi will be same as it has been for last 25 years during my work with the several different organizations that I have served, which is “focus on problem resolution, address the issues to resolve it, and move forward.”
 
I thank all my predecessors, our committee members including committee chairs, and my executive members for their help, support, guidance, constructive criticism and blessings, which have allowed me to listen, learn, and grow in my roles in leadership. I would not be in this position without their support. Over the years, by working in different organizations at the local and national levels, I have learned a lot. I will continue to cherish learning through the work and promise to share my learning with others in leadership.
 
My goal during my tenure as president is first to listen to the needs of all current life members, early carrier psychiatrists, and members in training, and then to help meet those needs successfully, which will allow our members to see the value in being a part of this organization as well as allow a growth in membership. I will also strive to reach out to chapter presidents and support their efforts to make their chapters more vibrant and engage in meaningful activities at the local level for chapter members. All members can reach out to any of the extended executive members or the board of trustees for support and help that they may need.
 
We will continue our efforts to strengthen our affiliation and collaboration in the area of educational seminars and addressing cultural diversity/treatment/access to mental health care issues with other professional associations in North America as well as globally, especially with our motherland.
 
With the younger generation in leadership now, we will continue our attempts to help strengthen members in training of Indian heritage to excel in the field of their choice, which can be academic, research, clinical diagnoses, psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, forensics, substance abuse, administration, or writing papers and publishing. The IAPA senior membership is rich with diverse interests and a myriad of resources; these members can be utilized to guide and mentor the members in training in areas of mutual interest.
 
As an initiative with the input from my executive committee, we have embarked on hosting monthly teleconferences. We will also be furthering plans that were initiated by previous presidents and bring those projects to fruition. One of these projects is having new attractive logo for the association and I am happy to report that the project is complete. We will still be working on making our website more user friendly, especially for registering for our banquet dinner during the annual meeting. We are going to work on providing some additional features for web based learning and hook up educational resources directly to the web page. We also plan to provide information about our allied organization meetings and other CME opportunities. Since we have embarked on having our membership database updated and maintained as a web based database with members having control over maintaining their profile, will continue to resolve and ease the process of logging in by member IDs and for new members to register and join the IAPA.
 
Lastly, our IAPA’s financial status remains very good. I would like to thank all the sponsors of our organization for meetings at the national level as well as at the local chapter levels. Without strong, unconditional financial support from these sponsors, we would not be fiscally sustainable and could not bring excellent educational programs during our annual meetings year after year. Our accounts remain transparent and any member who may have any questions or concerns about it is welcome to send me an email and I will be happy to answer. Our BOT and EC continue to provide oversight to our accounts periodically throughout the year. Any chapter presidents who have questions regarding their chapter account can also send me an email and I will be happy provide him or her that information.
 
I request that you all talk to our colleagues who are not members of our association and ask him or her to join IAPA. I also welcome and invite you to send the EC any comments, suggestions, ideas or requests that can help further our association’s goals and objectives.
 
Regards,
Dilipkumar Patel, M.D., DLFAPA
President, Indo-American Psychiatric Association