July 5, 2023

Dear Colleagues:

It is with a tremendous sense of gratitude that I assume the privilege of leading ASCP for the next two years.  Like many of you, ASCP has been my professional home for a long time and I am truly honored by the opportunity to give something back to the organization in the form of service and, I hope, a sense of inspiration and joy for what we do.  I am especially grateful to Les Citrome, Madhukar Trivedi and Trisha Suppes as the officers who have steered us through the unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic; to the chairs and members of our committees who have helped maintain our creativity and forward momentum; and to all the board members who have helped keep our organization strong and vibrant.   For me, it was a thrill to see so many colleagues in person at the annual meeting and feel that much closer to life returning to pre-pandemic normalcy.

I would like to take this opportunity to share my vision and agenda for our organization, which I would summarize as follows:

Membership and Outreach

  • I would like to see our membership grow by 50% over the next two years. One strategy to achieve this is to make a concerted outreach to psychiatry residents and other trainees, an effort I am happy to personally undertake with the Membership Committee and Parthenon.
  • If you have been a mentor to a new investigator awardee, stay in touch with them! Offer your continued input to their career development and cultivate your relationship with them. Check in periodically by email.  Encourage their ongoing involvement as ASCP members.  Encourage them to join committees, submit workshops and symposia to our annual meeting, and find a means of expression for their own ideas through involvement in our organization.
  • Please make mention of ASCP and the value of membership when you give lectures to trainees or speak professionally at CME programs or scientific conferences. Bring ASCP business cards.  Our members are our ambassadors.
  • I would welcome the expansion of our website to provide our members with a more interactive communication forum – both for informal networking, posing questions for discussion to colleagues at large, promoting clinical trials and enrollment efforts, or helping colleagues to find psychopharmacology referrals across the country.

Public Visibility As A Professional Leadership Organization

  • I am committed to carrying forward Madhukar’s strategic plan in which we strive to increase the visibility of ASCP as an authoritative organization poised to address scientifically relevant psychopharmacology issues both for the general public and the scientific community at large.
  • At the inception of his presidency, Mark Rapaport proposed the idea that ASCP might consider becoming a member organization of the AAMC Council on Faculty and Academic Societies, affiliate with one or more APA Councils, or develop new internal committees on issues such as governmental affairs and public advocacy. I would welcome the opportunity to further advance initiatives such as these. Indeed, we have already formed a task force being led by our new president-elect, Anita Clayton, to a) examine our members’ values at the interface of society, the environment, and psychopharmacology, b) develop our organizational response to state or federal government influence over healthcare decisions, and c) help us decide whether state healthcare policies should influence the location choice of our annual meeting.

Expert contributions to practice

  • I would like to see ASCP further increase its presence in the peer reviewed literature by conducting additional membership surveys, following the one we published in 2015 on antidepressant prescribing habits (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26129956/)

Education and Lifelong Learning

  • We have embarked on developing a new, state-of-the-art psychopharmacology educational curriculum under the auspices of the Committee for a Comprehensive Curriculum (CCC), being led by Matt Macaluso and Rick Weisler. I am committed to seeing this important and ambitious project through to its fruition.
  • Following the suggestions made by a number of our ASCP colleagues, I would like to see us increase our educational outreach programs through more live online programming – this can include ask-the-expert webinars, free grand rounds programs to training programs, and podcasts. If you would like of be part of initiatives in this area please let us know.

Together we have the chance to do exciting things and enhance the stature of our field.  I am honored by the opportunity to serve as ASCP president.  Please contact me with any thoughts, ideas and suggestions that may arise in the weeks and months ahead and I will assure that the voices of our members are heard.

Sincerely,

 

Joe Goldberg, MD