• IBERO-URMC Lazos Fuertes and La Clinica: Telva Olivares, MD: To address health care issues identified by Nuestra Salud and the Latino Community Assessment, the UR Department of Psychiatry and the IBERO-American Action League partnered in 1999 to develop IBERO-URMC Lazos Fuertes. Designed to provide Latino families with access to mental health care, medical care and addiction treatment, IBERO-URMC Lazos Fuertes currently operates near the University’s undergraduate campus. La Clinica, coordinated by the Finger Lakes Migrant Health Care Project, Inc.,provides health care services to the 1300 migrant and seasonal farm worker patients in Wayne, Cayuga, Ontario, and western Oswego Counties. The medical director of both IBERO-URMC Lazos Fuertes and La Clinica is Telva Olivares, MD, a dually trained internist/psychiatrist who will serve as a site coordinator for trainees wishing to gain clinical research experience at these bilingual, bicultural care-delivery sites. As a dually trained physician who has chosen to pursue community based psychiatry with a heavy emphasis on medical comorbidity, Dr. Olivares is an excellent role model for R25 trainees, especially the medical students and residents. These sites are excellent educational venues for trainees interested in mood disorders and comorbidity in Latino primary care patients.
  


• Strong Behavioral Health Community Mental Health Center: Glenn Palmer, MS, CASAC: Approximately 45% of the patients seen in our CMHC in 2004 were Medicaid-insured and 58% were unemployed due to disability or inability to find work. Ethnic characteristics of Medicaid patients in the CMHC were: White (52%), African American (38%), Hispanic (8%), and other ethnic minority (2%). Community mental health centers have received little attention in treatment research, despite the psychiatric and social complexities of their patients and the public health need. Beginning in 2001, Nancy Talbot because the first researcher in our Department to launch a treatment study in the context of this CMHC. Her proposed test (R01 first submission, June 2005, priority score 183, 30th percentile) of an evidence-based depression treatment, Interpersonal Psychotherapy, in a community mental health center provides a much-needed examination of its relevance in a real-world clinical setting. Dr. Talbot’s research is but one example of the type of CMHC-based research that could involve our trainees. Working with faculty mentors and Mr. Palmer, Director of Clinical Operations for Ambulatory Services, our trainees will be poised to bridge the chasm between research and clinical practice. The CMHC will be an ideal setting for trainees interested in mood disorders in socioeconomically disadvantaged patients seeking specialty mental health care.

External Advisory Board (EAB) members will travel to Rochester at the end of Years 2 and 4 to meet with trainees, faculty, and community partners. Based on the data emerging from these meetings, they will advise the PRIDE Executive Committee about needed changes in program organization and implementation. As well, two of our EAB members will present brief workshops on culturally sensitive mentoring for UR mentors. All EAB members have some connections to our academic medical center and have experience in multicultural education and/or NIH-funded training grants. Dr. Abernethy is a former UR faculty member; Drs. Arredondo and Ponterotto have presented day-long workshops as guests of the Department of Psychiatry’s Psychotherapy Institute (please see Resources and Environment); Dr. Reynolds was a visiting scholar in the Department on Psychiatry and collaborates with several faculty in the Department’s Program in Geriatrics and Neuropsychiatry; Dr. Schell will be making his first visit to our Department this Winter to provide consultation to faculty and speak in our “Community Counts” seminar, supported by our Office of Mental Health Promotion.

• Alexis Abernethy, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, has published extensively on the topics of multicultural education and religion and health, including publications in collaboration with the PRIDE PI. Formerly on the UR faculty, she brings to the EAB an “insider’s perspective” on Rochester and the UR Department of Psychiatry.
• Lawrence Schell, PhD, Professor of Anthropology and Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York. Dr. Schell’sresearch concerns the interrelationship between biology and culture and focuses on biological responses to contemporary urban environments. As Director of the Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities and PI on an R24 to create an EXPORT Center for Health Disparities in Smaller Cities, he brings a ‘biological perspective’ to the EAB and will facilitate our attempts to enhance our network of collaboratorsin Upstate New York.
• Joseph Ponterotto, PhD, Professor of Counseling and Counseling Psychology, Fordham University, is a multicultural consultant to schools, universities, mental health agencies, hospitals, and other settings with a focus on diversity, racism and prejudices, and building multicultural competence.
• Charles F. Reynolds, III, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, is a distinguished senior researcher who is currently PI on two training grants and a mental health research education grant, a focus of which is to help minority (primarily African American) researchers launch and maintain their careers in mental health research.