Recipients of the J. Elliott Royer Award for Excellence in Psychiatry
The J. Elliott Royer Award for Excellence in Psychiatry will be awarded to Ana Gonzalez, DO, Lisa Inman, MD, and Daniel Mathalon, PhD, MD. This biennial prize goes to an academic psychiatrist and a community-based practitioner who have made high-impact scholarly and creative contributions to the field of psychiatry during the past year.
Ana Gonzalez, DO, and Lisa Inman, MD
The Royer Award for Excellence in Community Psychiatry will be awarded jointly to Ana Gonzalez, DO, and Lisa Inman, MD, for their work as Co-Chief Medical Officers of the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Behavioral Health Services. Drs. Inman and Gonzalez are committed and inspiring leaders who have navigated San Francisco’s community behavioral health care system, amending and creating programs and services to address the evolving behavioral health care needs arising from increasing homelessness, the Covid pandemic, the Fentanyl crisis and other recent challenges faced by the communities they serve.
Stepping into their Co-CMO roles during the peak of the COVID pandemic, they readily assumed leadership in the Department’s overall response, as well as the Behavioral Health Division’s response. As psychiatrists, they quickly came up to speed on rapidly evolving scientific guidance and translated it to behavioral health settings. They were quickly regarded as our local experts and called upon frequently.
Drs. Inman and Gonzalez have excelled in their leadership of the multiple and rapidly changing policy and practice issues facing behavioral health in California. They have led the clinical implementation of a new electronic health record system, both within directly operated clinical sites as well as more than 50 contracted sites. Drs. Inman and Gonzalez have also led the clinical and policy implementation of critical new statewide initiatives, including major Medi-Cal policy and payment reform (CalAIM), implementation of Care Court, and SB43. Each of these significant new statewide initiatives affects our delivery of clinical care.
Drs. Inman and Gonzalez are strong and compassionate leaders, and together, they make a remarkable team. They are a model of collaboration, coordination, and mutual support that benefits their clients and the larger public health system in ways large and small. Their shared leadership is a testament to their shared goals—to provide the best care possible to clients, to support and encourage staff and trainee growth and well-being, and to contribute to the greater good of our community.
Daniel Mathalon, PhD, MD
The Royer Award for Excellence in Academic Psychiatry will be awarded to Daniel Mathalon, PhD, MD, in recognition of his long track record of outstanding contributions as a mentor, educator, clinician, and researcher to the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (DPBS) and the San Francisco VA Health Care System (SFVAHCS).
It would be difficult to capture the breadth of Dr. Mathalon’s research accomplishments fully, but he is perhaps best known for his work in the field of prodromal psychosis, developing EEG and fMRI biomarkers that predict which individuals with prodromal symptoms are at greatest risk for transition to full psychosis. He has published over 430 peer-reviewed papers and has an H-index of 100, demonstrating the profound impact of his work on psychiatric electrophysiology and neuroimaging research. In addition, he has a long history of service on NIH study sections and review committees, editorial boards of top scientific journals, and the highly selective Scientific Council of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.
Dr. Mathalon is a superb and highly sought-after research mentor to UCSF fellows and junior faculty. He has served as a primary mentor or co-mentor for many junior UCSF faculty during their mentored VA or NIH Research Career Development Awards. He also continues to help shape the future of academic psychiatry at UCSF as the DPBS Deputy Vice Chair for Research at SFVAHCS, where he has made significant contributions to the department’s efforts to address diversity, equity, and inclusion values as they pertain to research, paths to research for faculty who start in non-research tracks, and efforts to support and promote COVID-19-related research.
In addition to his scientific contributions, Dr. Mathalon has built a reputation as a master clinician who provides state-of-the-art training and supervision of residents and medical students rotating through the UCSF Path Program for Early Psychosis. Dr. Mathalon has been active in educating community clinicians about early psychosis, including the distinction between prodromal level symptoms and fully psychotic symptoms. He regularly gives outreach talks to clinicians working on the front lines with youth, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are experiencing early signs of psychosis.
Throughout his career, Dr. Mathalon has firmly established himself as an internationally renowned expert in his field and a tireless advocate for integrating research, education, and clinical care across psychiatry and the behavioral sciences. His sustained commitment to research excellence, mentorship, and service have made him a true leader in the highest circles of academic psychiatry.
The awards will be presented at the Psychiatry faculty meeting on September 17, 2024.