Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, Project/Medical Director
Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, is an Addiction Psychiatrist and the Barbara Wilson Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Pillar Lead for the Community Engagement in the NYU Langone Institute for Excellence in Health Equity. She is dedicated to creating spaces and opportunities for people of color, specifically Black women in academia who are vastly historically excluded. The fundamental message of equity and inclusion has informed her research, clinical work, and leadership duties at NYU and beyond. Dr. Jordan was the first Black Associate Program Director for the Yale Psychiatry Residency, her immediate past academic home, responsible for supervising a large group of 64 physicians providing mental health and addiction services throughout Yale medical systems in the state of Connecticut.
She recently became Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for the Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network within the National Institute of Drug (Ab)use, where she’ll be working to improve health outcomes for people with opioid use disorder in the carceral system. Dr. Jordan also serves as the Medical Director of Recognizing and Eliminating disparities in Addiction through Culturally informed Healthcare (REACH) Program, a Substance (Ab)use and Mental Health Services Administration grant, in conjunction with the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry geared at increasing the number of addiction specialists from racial and ethnic minoritized populations who obtain training to provide culturally-informed addiction treatment. Passionate about helping racial and ethnic minoritized people achieve wellness and recovery from substance use disorders, Dr. Jordan was fully drawn to community-based research. Dr. Jordan is an NIH-funded researcher where she studies long term outcomes for providing addiction treatment in faith settings.
She is elated and inspired to exist in an environment supportive of her vision to work with communities, integrating the cultural and religious aspects of people’s lives, while also addressing structural inequities that impede improved mental health and wellness. She is deeply grateful to be taking care of the most historically excluded patients during this time, who are facing extreme challenges in obtaining addiction treatment due to COVID19. Dr. Jordan is the proud recipient of various clinical and research awards and was inducted into the Top 40 under 40 society, by her undergraduate alma mater, Hampton University, a historically Black institution.
Jeanette M. Tetrault, MD, FACP FASAM
Dr. Tetrault is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health, Vice-Chief for Education for the Section of General Internal Medicine, Associate Director for the Program in Addiction Medicine, and Fellowship Director for Addiction Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. Her scholarly work focuses on care of patients with addiction and the medical conditions associated with substance use, mainly HIV and Hepatitis C. Dr. Tetrault is the co-director of the Addiction Recovery Clinic at the New Haven Primary Care Consortium and a staff physician at the Central Medical Unit which is an integrated addiction and primary care clinic at the APT Foundation. She has been recognized for her teaching accomplishments being awarded the New England Regional Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Clinician Educator of the Year Award in 2013, The W. Anderson Spickard Award for Excellence in Mentorship by the Association of Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance use and Addiction (AMSERSA) in 2018, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine Training Directors Award in 2021. She serves as president-elect of the American College of Academic Addiction Medicine and is a past-president of the New England Region of SGIM In 2017, she was recognized as a Macy Foundation Faculty Scholar.
Kathryn Cates-Wessel, PI
Ms. Cates-Wessel has more than 30 years of background and experience in the substance use disorder field in administration, medical education, and policy. She is Chief Executive Officer of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry (AAAP) and Principal Investigator and Project Director of several federally funded grants including, Providers Clinical Support System (PCSS), www.pcssNOW.org; Opioid Response Network (ORN), www.opioidresponsenetwork.com; the Minority Fellowship grant “Recognizing and Eliminating Disparities in Addiction Through Culturally Informed Healthcare” (REACH), https://reachgrant.org; and Expansion of Interprofessional Education (SUD-Training), https://sud-training.org. Prior to her work at AAAP, she was Associate Director of Brown University’s Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies for over 19 years and Executive Director of Physicians and Lawyers for National Drug Policy, a think tank of leaders from law and medicine advocating for prevention/treatment of individuals with substance use and opioid use disorders over incarceration. Prior to Brown University, she was the Associate Director of a residential treatment center for adolescents with substance use disorders and co-occurring mental disorders.