Sidney Hankerson, MD, MBA, holds two new leadership roles at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: Vice Chair for Community Engagement for the Department of Psychiatry, as well as Director of Mental Health Equity Research for the Institute for Health Equity Research (IHER) in the Department of Population Health Science and Policy.
Mount Sinai’s Department of Psychiatry is pleased to welcome Sidney Hankerson, MD, MBA, to our faculty. Dr. Hankerson holds two leadership roles at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai: Vice Chair for Community Engagement for the Department of Psychiatry, as well as Director of Mental Health Equity Research for the Institute for Health Equity Research (IHER) in the Department of Population Health Science and Policy.
Dr. Hankerson has received several prestigious awards, including the American Psychiatric Association’s Nancy C.A. Roeske, MD, Certificate of Recognition for Excellence in Medical Student Education, and he was chosen as a 2021 Emerging Leader in Health and Medicine by the National Academy of Medicine. Last year, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him Chair of the Community Services Board of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In that role, he identified two priorities. The first is addressing behavioral health care needs in children and adolescents, given the rise in suicide attempts—particularly in Black and Latinx youth. The second is addressing the workforce shortage to meet the increased demand for mental health care. “Figuring out how we address the shortage and demand for these vulnerable populations is crucial,” he said. “Ideally, we can bring in early-stage clinicians and researchers to be on the ground and develop new models of care and engagement and delivery models.”
At Mount Sinai, Dr. Hankerson’s primary focus is in reducing racial and ethnic disparities in mental health treatment, particularly depression. “My overall charge is to really integrate principles of community-based participatory research—partnering with community organizations, and working in lockstep with community members to develop, implement, and test culturally relevant mental health interventions,” he said. To that end, he has launched an initiative in Harlem that trains church members as community health workers to screen for depression and provide brief evidence-based counseling. He plans to build on this to create a model for church-affiliated mental health clinics that can be replicated through New York City, as well as nationwide.
“Mount Sinai’s clinical infrastructure and IHER’s expertise in engaging communities of color will be invaluable in working toward that objective,” he said. “I think it will be a very nice fit, both clinically, because Mount Sinai serves many patients who call Harlem home, and because our churches are among the most trusted institutions in the African American community and have long been natural havens for mental health support.”
Dr. Hankerson believes his most important job is to listen and learn from the faculty. “It’s a priority for me to learn and identify the wonderful things Mount Sinai is already doing in the community, and to try to expand it to give it a bigger platform as well as to identify opportunities that are yet untapped,” he said. “One of the things that’s so exciting and novel about Mount Sinai is the DEI Committee within Psychiatry. To have such a robust committee dedicated to DEI is really phenomenal, so I am really excited to work with them.”