Promoting family & provider mental well-being

Catherine Monk, PhD, is the inaugural Diana Vagelos Professor of Women’s Mental Health and Chief, Division of Women’s Mental Health, in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology (Ob/Gyn) and Professor of Medical Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is Research Scientist VI at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Monk directs Women’s Mental Health @Ob/Gyn, a 11-person embedded service within Ob/Gyn. Dr. Monk’s research, at the PerinatalPathways lab, brings together the fields of developmental psychopathology, developmental psychobiology, developmental neuroscience, and perinatal mental health to focus on the earliest influences on children’s developmental trajectories—those that happen in utero—and how to intervene early to help pregnant people and prevent mental health problems in the next generation. Her research has been continuously funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) since her NIH Career Development award in 2000 as well as by numerous foundations including the Bezos Family Foundation, the Robin Hood Foundation, March of Dimes, and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Darius Tandon, PhD, is a tenured professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine where he also is director of Northwestern’s Center for Community Health. Trained as a community psychologist and prevention scientist, his research focuses on improving perinatal mental health outcomes among vulnerable, lower socioeconomic, and ethnically diverse populations. Much of this research has focused on examining the impact and innovation of the Mothers and Babies perinatal depression preventive intervention, including several studies conducted in partnership with home visiting programs.

Dr. Babatope serves in leadership roles as the Training director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program and the Executive Director, Senate Bill 11– Texas Child Mental Health Consortium (TCMHCC) service programs at the Louis A. Faillace, MD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department; the Director of the autism spectrum disorders and Neurodevelopmental lifespan specialty clinic and a telemedicine-based provider with the UTHealth Houston Child Psychiatry Access Network (CPAN), amongst other clinical supervisory roles in the Integrated Pediatric Behavioral Health Clinic and the Child Psychiatry Fellows continuity clinic.  

She has extensive training and experience working with childhood mental health disorders, and her work at UTHealth drives her to search for innovative ways to mitigate episodes of acute crises while still promoting patient safety, improving access to diagnostic assessments, and practicing evidence-based psychotropic and therapeutic healthcare. Since July 2020, much of her focus has been on Texas Child Mental Health Care consortium initiatives: which includes managing Texas state funded programs in the department including the Child Psychiatry Access Network (CPAN), Texas Child Access through Telemedicine (TCHATT), Community Psychiatry Workforce Expansion Efforts (CPWE), as well as successfully managing the expansion of Child Psychiatry training positions and experiences at the institution.  

Lisa Boyars, MD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Texas Dell Medical School. She completed her psychiatry residency and fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) where she then built her expertise in perinatal and reproductive psychiatry.

She developed an early passion for removing barriers to care for vulnerable populations and was especially drawn to serving with persons requiring medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). Her clinical research and publications have been impactful in this field. As director of the busy Women’s Reproductive Behavioral Health at MUSC outpatient clinic, she fostered key relationships with obstetric practices that brought telehealth and MOUD to perinatal persons in rural South Carolina. She has been a key individual in the formation of South Carolina and Texas’ first perinatal psychiatry access programs.  

In June of 2022, she joined faculty at Dell Medical School and has assembled a truly unique multidisciplinary behavioral health team embedded into a fetal care and NICU setting. This team provides trauma informed care longitudinally for women throughout pregnancy and the postpartum year. She is devoted to medical education and greatly enjoys teaching, supervising, and mentoring medical students and residents.

Luanne Southern works at the University of Texas Systems as the Executive Director for the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium. She has over 35 years of experience serving in health and human services positions at the national, state, and local level within the government, non‐profit, academic, philanthropic, and private sectors. She came to UTS from Casey Family Programs, an operating foundation focused on reforming the nation’s child welfare system and addressing the needs of children in foster care. Ms. Southern was Deputy Commissioner for the Texas Department of State Health Services from 2007-2013.

Her children’s services experience in Texas includes serving as a social worker at Austin State Hospital and working in various children’s mental health positions for the Travis County Texas Local Mental Health Authority. Luanne spent 5 years in the Washington, DC area doing national work to support federal, state, and local reforms in children’s mental health, child welfare, juvenile justice, special education, healthcare financing and prevention and early intervention. She is a current Commissioner on the Supreme Court of Texas Permanent Judicial Commission for Children, Youth and Families. Luanne has a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelors in Social Work from Goshen College in Indiana.