SAMHSA National Advisory Council

SAMHSA National Advisory Council Members Biographies

MEMBERS

EX OFFICIO MEMBERS

  • Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., Director, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
  • George F. Koob, Ph.D., Director, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, Maryland
  • Nora D. Volkow, M.D., Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, Maryland
  • Marsden H. McGuire, M.D., M.B.A. (SES-EQV), Director, Continuum of Care and General Mental Health Services, Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention (10NC5), Veterans Affairs Central Office, Washington, District of Columbia
  • Rick Mooney, M.D, M.P.H., Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Health Services Policy and Oversight, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) Defense Health Headquarters, Falls Church, Virginia
  • Neeraj Gandotra, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Rockville, Maryland

Laura Howard, J.D., Secretary, Kansas Department of Children and Family Services, Lawrence, Kansas

Secretary Howard’s experience includes more than 30 years of government and human service work. She previously worked as a special assistant, deputy secretary and chief of staff for the former Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. She also served as regional administrator for Region VII of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Most recently she served as the Director of the KU Public Management Center. Secretary Howard holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Administration from Miami University and a law degree from the University of Kansas.

Tracy Neal-Walden, Ph.D., Director & Senior Vice President, Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Easter Seals Serving, Silver Spring, Maryland

Dr. Neal-Walden is a licensed clinical psychologist and a retired Air Force colonel with more than 25 years of experience in mental health leadership, evaluation and treatment, program management and policy. She currently serves as a senior leader and clinic director with Easterseals and a national network of mental health clinics, providing quality care and building strategic partnerships with community, federal, and state resources/agencies to enhance the well-being of veterans and military families. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Drexel University-Hahnemann Medical Campus in Philadelphia, PA, and completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in clinical health psychology at the Wilford Hall Medical and Surgical Center in San Antonio, TX. Dr. Neal-Walden’s specialization is cognitive-behavioral treatment of anxiety, suicide assessment and intervention, and treatment of behavioral health clients with co-existing medical disorders.

Francisco Rodriguez-Fraticelli, Executive President, Coalición de Coaliciones, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Mr. Rodriguez-Fraticelli is the Executive President and Project Manager of Coalición de Coaliciones of Puerto Rico. (Coalition of Coalitions of Puerto Rico). He is fervent advocate for the needs of the homeless and the disadvantaged. He is a Licensed Professional Planner and has many years of experience in the development of community based non-profit organizations supporting services for people in need.

Administrative responsibilities of a community-based non-profit providing supportive services to a variety of underserved population, including persons with substance abuse conditions, persons living with HIV/AIDS, homeless persons, street workers, inmates, and many neglected persons.

Responsibilities includes the oversight of federal and local government proposal grants directed to provide housing facilities, medical, and supportive services to identified population in Southern Puerto Rico.

Project Management responsibilities of federal grants directed to implement a Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) in Southern, Western and Eastern Puerto Rico. Program design, identification and implementation of potential areas of project development and strategic alliances opportunities to increase their effectiveness in service provision specially directed to provide, housing, substance abuse and mental health treatment, employment, education, training, enterprise-small business-income producing development activities, and social support to underserved population.

He has been project manager for multiple community-based organizations that specifically target access for homeless health, access to Buprenorphine, mental health and work reintegration programs, and managing grants to implement a homeless management information system, and others.

He has also provided technical assistance to multiple organizations on funding sources and community resources to complement fund requirements. He has been instrumental in identifying potential areas of project development and forming strategic alliances to increase effectiveness in service provision.

He has also worked for the National Puerto Rican Coalition in Washington, DC and San Juan, PR in several capacities: as consultant, program coordinator, training coordinator, regional director and liaison. He developed and implemented a thorough Technical Assistance Program funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to assist community-based non-profit organizations and local governments in communities with high concentration of Hispanic communities in the US Midwest and the East Coast; directed to increase participation and access in HUD’s funding opportunities and community development programs to underserved communities and populations. Assistant to NPRC’s President in assessing potential, emerging and existing CHDOs in Puerto Rico.

Sally Satel, M.D., American Enterprise Institute, Washington, District of Columbia

Dr. Sally Satel is a resident scholar at AEI and the staff psychiatrist at a local methadone clinic in D.C. Dr. Satel was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale University from 1988 to 1993 and remains a lecturer at Yale. From 1993 to 1994 she was a Robert Wood Johnson policy fellow with the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. She serves on the National Advisory Council of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, HHS. Dr. Satel has written widely in academic journals on topics in psychiatry and medicine and has published articles on cultural aspects of medicine and science in numerous magazines and journals. She has testified before Congress on veterans’ issues, mental health policy, drug courts, and health disparities. Dr. Satel is author of Drug Treatment: The Case for Coercion (AEI Press, 1999), and PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine (Basic Books, 2001). She is coauthor of One Nation under Therapy (St. Martin’s Press, 2005), co-author of The Health Disparity Myth (AEI Press, 2006), and editor of When Altruism Isn’t Enough: The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors (AEI Press, 2009). Her recent book, co-authored with Emory psychologist Scott Lilienfeld is Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience (Basic, 2013). Brainwashed was a finalist for the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science.

Allan Tasman, M.D., Professor an Emeritus Chairman, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky

Allan Tasman is Professor and Emeritus Chairman (Chairman 1991-2015) of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Louisville and Schwab Endowed Chair in Social and Community Psychiatry, He completed psychiatric residency at the University of Cincinnati following medical school at the University of Kentucky. He also is a graduate of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and was a faculty member in the Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute for many years. He is internationally known for his advocacy for innovation in psychiatric education and clinical services and for an evidence based integrative bio-psycho-social model of treatment within a comprehensive and collaborative system of care. His reputation in psychiatric education began when he was a faculty member at the University of Connecticut Medical School during the late 1970’s, and he continues to be a highly regarded teacher and educational leader both nationally and internationally. Through his national and international work over the last three decades, he also has been involved in a broad range of strategic planning and mental health policy issues, particularly in the areas of managed care, mental health parity, mental health workforce, and the impact of the Affordable Care Act on access to mental health services. Known as a collaborative and transformational leader, he led the psychiatry department in Louisville to a sustained period of growth and expansion of its academic and clinical programs including growing its NIH rankings for research to the highest level in the department’s history, and the expansion or development of a number of new subspecialty education/training programs. In addition, he conceptualized and led the development of and the approval process for two multidisciplinary university designated centers of excellence, the University of Louisville Depression Center, and the University of Louisville Autism Center.

In Louisville, recognizing his knowledge and skills in health policy, strategic planning, and program implementation, he has been asked to serve in a number of leadership positions, including service as President of the medical school practice plan where he successfully oversaw the first complete revision of the plan in over 20 years. He also is the founding President of KMRRRG, the university owned malpractice insurance corporation, in which role he spearheaded implementation of extensive risk management training programs, and Treasurer of Passport Health Plan. In the early 1990’s, to address health and mental health disparities in the Medicaid population, he conceptualized and helped catalyze implementation of Passport, an innovative non-profit managed care system which is now the Louisville region’s largest service provider for the Medicaid population, and the second largest in the entire state, with nearly a 2-billion-dollar annual budget and consistently in the US News and World Report and NCQA top rank. A key factor in Passport’s success has been the initial and ongoing focus on an incentive system for clinicians and senior administrators which prioritized quality of health outcomes. In addition, he has played a leadership role in a variety of initiatives which increased interinstitutional and interdepartmental collaboration, including consolidation of the medical school individual department practices into a single entity and developing a nationally recognized regional psychiatric crisis intervention program. (Honorable Mention in the APA community services recognition award).

He also conceptualized, developed, and served as founding director of the School of Medicine Distinction in Research Program, a school wide academic enrichment program to encourage choice of academic research careers by medical students. This program’s success has led to development of new tracks in global health, health economics, leadership, and education.

His research has been funded with a variety of federal and other grants over 35 years. Using electroencephalography brain mapping techniques, his work has focused on the neurophysiology of cognitive processes, especially related to alcohol and drug addiction, mood disorders, and autism. His laboratory at the University of Connecticut, which performed all the cognitive neurophysiology research for the department of psychiatry’s NIAAA funded alcohol research center, was one of the first to describe functional neural abnormalities in offspring of alcoholics which was present before the development of alcohol abuse in those offspring. His recent research focuses on investigation of innovative neuromodulation treatments of autism and substance abuse.

He was president of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training (AADPRT) and of the Association for Academic Psychiatry (AAP). During his presidencies in AADPRT and AAP he oversaw the transformation of the Journal of Psychiatric Education into Academic Psychiatry, now the most highly regarded publication regarding psychiatric education and academic psychiatry in the world. He also served as president of the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry (AACDP) for two terms. He is the only individual to have served as president of each of these three major US academic psychiatry organizations and the only person to have served two terms as president of the chairs association.

In the American Psychiatric Association, he served as Scientific Program Chairman for four years, Vice President, President–Elect, and President. During his tenure as chair of the program committee he introduced a number of innovations in the format of the annual meeting. As APA president elect, he conceptualized and successfully gained Board of Trustees approval to establish the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE) now nearing its third decade of success. As APA president he implemented the initial planning process for DSM 5 and oversaw a complete corporate reorganization of the APA which resulted in substantially improved efficiency and productivity as well as stabilization of its financial base.

In 2005, he was elected to a six-year term as Secretary for Education of the World Psychiatric Association, where he was responsible for global educational policy. In that role he spearheaded the development and implementation of global training and educational guidelines for medical student and resident education in psychiatry. In 2014 he began the first of two three-year terms as Chair of the WPA Section on Education, which develops and implements educational programs for the WPA. In that role he is developing programs for primary care clinician psychiatric education and psychiatric education in countries with low mental health clinician resources. He also was President of the Pacific Rim College of Psychiatrists from 2006-08, an international organization of academic leaders representing all countries of the pacific rim, in which role he established and now serves as Senior Editor of the journal Asia Pacific Psychiatry, the first transnational English language psychiatric journal for the entire pacific rim region. The journal was approved for indexing in the second year of publication. The journal also was selected to be their official journal by the 20,000 member Asian Federation of Psychiatric Associations in 2018.

He has authored or edited 36 psychiatric textbooks and monographs. His more than 240 peer-reviewed publications, chapters, and abstracts, 70 editorials in psychiatric publications, and over 380 national and international presentations have focused on psychiatric education, psychotherapy training, his cognitive neuroscience research, clinical practice, health policy, and global mental health. He is a founding editor or co-editor of two psychiatric journals, the Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research, and Asia-Pacific Psychiatry. He also currently serves is Editor in Chief (Americas) of Mental Health in Family Medicine. He is founding senior editor of all four editions of a comprehensive textbook, Psychiatry, called “the best current textbook of psychiatry” by the New England Journal of Medicine and the “gold standard” by the American Journal of Psychiatry. The 4th edition was published in 2015. His book The Doctor-Patient Relationship in Pharmacotherapy: Improving Treatment Effectiveness, published in 2000, focuses on the critical importance of the therapeutic alliance and the use of psychotherapeutic skills in patient care, no matter what the primary mode of treatment nor the clinical setting. He also is Editor in Chief of Psychiatric Times, the publication most widely read by psychiatrists in the United States.

He is the recipient of a number of awards for leadership, educational excellence, and distinguished professional service. These include the Roeske Award for Medical Student Education (1991) and the Bland Award for Residency Education (2005), both from the American Psychiatric Association, and the Educator of the Year Award (2000) from the Association for Academic Psychiatry. He was elected to membership in Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical honor society, in 2002 in recognition of academic career achievement. In 2003, he received the University of Louisville President’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession. In 2005 he received a special presidential commendation from the American Psychiatric Association for distinguished service to psychiatry. He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists of the United Kingdom in 2007, a rare honor for a psychiatrist trained outside the United Kingdom, and an Honorary Fellow of the World Psychiatric Association in 2011. He was the recipient of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2008, the only psychiatrist to have received this honor in the school’s history. In 2012, he received the Franklin and Marshall College Alumni Citation, the college’s distinguished alumnus award. He received the 2013 University of Louisville President’s Distinguished Faculty Award for National/International Service which recognized his international educational activities. He is one of only a few faculty members in the entire university to have received two such university wide recognitions. The American College of Psychiatrists awarded him the 2016 Distinguished Service to Psychiatry Award, the organization’s highest honor.

His community activities in Louisville include service on the board of directors of the Area Wide Alcohol/Drugs Rehabilitation and Education Coalition, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Jewish Community Center, the Metro Board of Health Affordable Care Act Implementation Steering Committee, the Mayor’s Dual Diagnosis Cross Functional Task Force, and chairman for the Mayor’s Drug Abuse Treatment Summit.

Barbara E. Warren, Psy.D., Director, LGBT Program and Policies, Mount Sinai Health System, New York City, New York

Barbara E. Warren Psy.D., LMHC, is Director for LGBT Programs and Policies in the Office for Diversity and Inclusion, Mount Sinai Health System, where she leads Mount Sinai’s implementation of LGBT culturally and clinically competent health care. She holds an appointment as Assistant Professor of Medical Education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and is teaching and developing curricula to address best practices in serving diverse patient populations. Dr. Warren previously served as Distinguished Lecturer and Director for the Center for LGBT Social Science and Public Policy at Hunter College, City University of New York. For 21 years, she was senior management at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of New York City, led the Center’s behavioral health programs, where she co-founded the Center’s then ground-breaking Gender Identity Project and was responsible for the Center’s health policy and government relations initiatives. Dr. Warren has served as an advisor to local, state and national government and policy organizations including chairing the Multi-Cultural Advisory Council to the NYS Commissioner of Mental Health, on the LGBT Task Force at Health Care for All New Yorkers, as a Board Member of the National Coalition for LGBT Health and is currently on the Board of the National LGBT Cancer Network. She is a longtime member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health where she is faculty in WPATH’s Global Education Initiative and has served on its membership and ethics committees. She holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and has 40 years of experience in the development and delivery of substance use, mental health and public health programs and services in healthcare and community settings.

Cristina Rabadán-Diehl, Pharm.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., Rockville, Maryland

Dr. Cristina Rabadán-Diehl is a multidisciplinary scientist with over 30 years of experience working in Academia, Government and the Private Sector. She spent 21 years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an intramural scientist and health program administrator, where she managed a $150M portfolio of research and training programs, and directed the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Office of Global Health. During her tenure at the NIH, she was the Hispanic spokesperson for several campaigns and prevention programs and worked with Offices of Communications on outreach efforts to Hispanic communities and organizations.

She has worked with international multilateral organizations (World Health Organization, Pan American Health Organization, G20) on health policy issues representing the United States of America in her role as the Director of the Western Hemisphere at the Health and Human Services, Office of Global Affairs in the Office of the Secretary. During the four years she held that position, Dr. Rabadán-Diehl played key roles in advancing U.S. government health priorities around the world by levering her technical and policy knowledge and interacting with many stakeholders including scientists and Ministers of Health. In that role, she was the Technical Advisor to the Department of Health and Human Service’s Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan during his participation at the World Health Organization’s High Level Non-Communicable Disease Commission.

Currently, she is an Associate Director at Westat, a Contracting Research Organization, and the Principal Investigator of a clinical trial sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.

From personal perspective, Dr. Rabadan-Diehl lost her 28-year-old son to an opioid overdose in June 2019, and since then she has been collaborating with the Addiction Policy Forum, a nationwide nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating addiction as a major health problem, and Shatterproof, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to reversing the addiction crisis in the United States. She is a member of S.O.U.L. (Surviving Our Ultimate Loss), an organization aiming to help parents cope with the loss of a child to Drug Overdose.

Dr. Rabadán-Diehl holds a Pharmacy Doctorate from the School of Pharmacy at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid, Spain), a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the University of Miami (Miami, FL), and a Master’s in Public Health and a Certificate in Health Communications from Johns Hopkins University School of Public Heath (Baltimore, MD). She is an Adjunct Professor and the Director of the Global Health Diplomacy course at George Washington University.

Rahn Kennedy Bailey, M.D., Los Angeles, California

On July 1, 2019, Dr. Rahn Kennedy Bailey, M.D. was appointed Chief Medical Officer of Kedren Community Health Systems Inc. Additionally, Dr. Bailey has been appointed to Assistant Dean of Clinical Education at Charles R. Drew University. He has years of experience serving communities in need. By delivering outstanding clinical care and excellence in education, he seeks to advance his mission of lessening healthcare disparities.

Dr. Bailey has held a multitude of leadership roles academically and professionally and is the current Chairman of the NMA Cobb Institute Research Foundation and the 2019 M/UR Trustee Elect of the American Psychiatry Association.

Up until 2018, he was chair and professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC. He is a forensic psychiatrist and has written extensively on violence prevention, sexual violence, and gun violence. He wrote a book on gun violence.

Last Updated: 06/07/2022