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Meltzer-Brody is the recipient of the 2019 Alexandra Symonds Award, given in recognition of outstanding contributions and leadership in promoting women’s health and the advancement of women.


San Francisco, CA – The American Psychiatric Association (APA) presented Samantha Meltzer-Brody, MD, MPH, with the 2019 Alexandra Symonds Award at its annual meeting in San Francisco. The association says Meltzer-Brody’s demonstrated contributions and exceptional achievements in the field of women’s health make her an outstanding recipient of the award, which was established in 1997 in memory of Alexandra Symonds, MD, an APA Fellow and co-founder of the Association of Women Psychiatrists.

Meltzer-Brody is the director of the Perinatal Psychiatry Program at the UNC SOM and the Ray M. Hayworth Distinguished Professor in Mood and Anxiety Disorders. She was the academic principal investigator of clinical trials for the recently FDA-approved postpartum depression (PPD) drug Zulresso, the first treatment ever developed specifically for PPD. She also founded UNC’s perinatal psychiatry inpatient unit, the first of its kind in the U.S.

As part of the Alexandra Symonds Award, Meltzer-Brody gave a lecture titled, “This can’t be as good as it gets: the importance of disruptive innovation in reproductive psychiatry.” The presentation discussed “current models for implementing disruptive innovative approaches to reduce barriers to screening and treatment with the aspirational goal of widely delivering effective treatments (psychological, pharmacologic and other) across a broad range of diverse perinatal patient populations worldwide.” It also described “the importance of conducting translational science to increase the understanding of the underlying pathophysiology to optimize treatment for pregnant and postpartum women thereby decreasing adverse outcomes and improving mental health across two generations.”

The Alexandra Symonds Award is co-sponsored by the Association of Women Psychiatrists.