APA's Plan on Minority Issues and Concerns

By Edward Hanin, M.D.

APA has a strong record of supporting the concerns of minorities and underrepresented groups. These efforts have been spearheaded by APA's Council on National Affairs and its components and by the minority/underrepresented caucuses and their Assembly representatives. Strongly supported and encouraged by then President-elect Rodrigo Muņoz, M.D., efforts have been made over the past year to broaden APA's response to the concerns of its minority members beyond the activities of the components traditionally associated with these efforts. The plan, which was approved last month by the Board of Trustees, is the culmination of a cooperative effort begun over a year ago. At last year's fall component meetings, an open meeting on minority issues and concerns was held, hosted by the Council on National Affairs. Those attending freely stated their concerns and expressed considerable agreement on issues and priorities that they felt APA needed to address. Their issues were real, their goals achievable, but only if they became a priority of the entire Association. The goals were amazingly consistent with APA's overall goals as developed in the strategic planning process.

Dr. Muņoz asked the council and the Committee of Minority/Underrepresented Groups in the Assembly to develop an action plan to address their concerns. I hope in this brief article to give you some sense of the issues raised and what we feel needs to be done.

Among the major priorities identified were the following:

• APA needs to encourage cultural diversity both in training curricula and in the workforce, and to ensure that in all treatment guidelines developed by APA, the issue of the diverse cultural issues of patients and their impact on treatment are addressed.



• APA needs to advocate with legislative and regulatory bodies for issues of concern to our minority members and the patient groups they represent.



• APA needs to increase its own awareness and that of members about issues of concern to our minority/underrepresented groups through more effective member education by the Division of Public Affairs, Psychiatric News, and other means of educating the membership.



• APA needs to promote an increase in minority/underrepresented group psychiatrists in research and foster research on minority/underrepresented group populations.



• APA needs to develop programs of leadership training to assist minority/underrepresented members to move up career ladders both in their profession and within APA.



• APA needs to "mainstream" minority/underrepresented group issues so that they become priorities of the entire organization.

Implementation of such a plan will take the efforts of APA governance, our councils and their components, the district branches, and our members.

As is true of our nation as a whole, APA members are far more culturally and ethnically diverse than was true in the past. Our minority/underrepresented psychiatrist groups are a valuable resource to educate us all on issues of cultural diversity and their impact on the treatment of our increasingly diverse patients. These psychiatrists need to feel that APA is their home and that their issues are issues for us all. Many are not now members of APA, feeling unwanted and seeing APA as unresponsive to their concerns. Their needs can be addressed only by a vigorous, strong, and responsive APA. They need APA-and the APA needs them.

After the Board approved the Plan for Action on Minority Issues and Concerns, Dr. Muņoz sent letters to the chairs of many APA components; as did I. Dr. Muņoz sees the coming year as a unique opportunity to work together to make APA even more responsive to the needs of our diverse members and patients. The Council on National Affairs looks forward to the opportunity to work with the APA components to move forward in addressing and responding to the issues raised. We, together with the Committee of Minority/Underrepresented Groups in the Assembly, will be reviewing the diversity of appointments to APA components. Together with the APA leadership, we hope to meet annually with the leadership of independent organizations that represent minority/underrepresented psychiatrist groups to determine what APA can do to serve constituent psychiatrists better. We also will be encouraging our district branches to reach out to minority psychiatrists in their areas, especially those not already members of APA.

APA's plan to address minority issues and concerns is too extensive to give all the details here. It is an ambitious plan, but one whose goals can be achieved if the will is there and if the recruitment and retention of minority/underrepresented group members is considered a major priority of APA. We have always said that it is. Now we will see if we really mean it.