HPM Professor Dr. Vickie Mays Awarded Carl Taube Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Field of Mental Health
Dr. Vickie Mays, has been awarded the 2020 Carl Taube Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Field of Mental Health on behalf of the American Public Health Association Mental Health Section Awards Committee. She serves as a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and as Director of the UCLA Center on Bridging Research, Innovation, Training and Education for Minority Health Disparities Solutions.
The Carl Taube Award was created to recognize scholars who have made important lifetime contributions to public mental health. Carl Taube served as the the National Institute of Mental Health's director of the division of biometry and applied science where he played a major role in promoting mental health services and policy research.
Dr. Mays’ work as Director of the BRITE Center supports that innovative use of research, science, and policy development to help eliminate disparities in physical and mental health for racial, ethnic and sexual minorities. Her work reflects Carl Taube’s pioneering initiatives to ensure that national data could accurately track the impact of major policies like deinstitutionalization on underserved and stigmatized people with mental illness.
Her insistence on connection and her commitment to health equity resonates with the Mental Health Section’s core value of health and mental health as justice. Her focus on improving prevention and educational approaches to support Black Americans to cope with the stresses of the COVID epidemic, and on the impact of bullying on high rates of mental health challenges and increased risk for suicide among LGBTQ and American Indian youth are both in keeping with the current priorities of the Mental Health Section. She has integrated advocacy with broad and excellent scholarship to understand and eliminate health disparities.
Dr. Mays will give the Carl Taube lecture in the Mental Health Section Award Session at the 2020 APHA Annual Conference on October 26. Her address, "Understanding Mental Health and Psychological Distress at the Intersections of COVID-19 and the Anti-Racist Movement," will focus on available data on the mental health experiences of Black americans during the intersection of BLM and COVID-19.
This is the second time that a Health Policy and Management faculty member has received the Carl Taube award. Dr. Kenneth Wells was recognized by APHA in 2017 for his work on mental health services in disadvanaged communities.
Dr. Vickie Mays will join a distinguished line of scholars and activists in public mental health. You can find a description of prior awardees and of our overall Awards program here.