Ritvo Professor to address psychosocial needs of children with cancer

Andrés S. Martin, M.D., M.P.H., a child and adolescent psychiatrist on the faculty of the Yale Child Study Center (YCSC), has been named the inaugural Riva Ariella Ritvo Professor of Pediatric Oncology Psychosocial Services by the Yale Corporation.

The new professorship was established in September 2009 with a gift from Riva Ariella Ritvo, Ph.D., an autism expert and clinical instructor at the YCSC, and her husband, Alan B. Slifka, M.B.A., a noted philanthropist and member of the Yale College Class of 1951.

The professorship was created to hasten the pace of YCSC research in this area, with the aim of creating a model of comprehensive psychosocial care for children diagnosed with cancer and their families. Childhood cancer affects not only children’s physical health, but can threaten their social and emotional adjustment, educational performance and cognitive abilities.

After receiving his medical degree from Anahuac University in Mexico City in 1990, Martin completed a fellowship and residency in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, followed by a residency in internal medicine at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. He received his M.P.H. degree from the Yale School of Public Health.

Since 2002, Martin has been medical director of the Children’s Psychiatric Inpatient Service (CPIS) at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital, which serves children with serious neuropsychiatric disorders and is an important clinical interface between the YCSC and the hospital. In addition to providing clinical care, the CPIS has evolved into a model training facility for house staff and for medical students from Yale and other institutions.

Martin is director of medical studies at the YCSC. He is also associate training director of both the child and adolescent psychiatry program and an innovative program in child psychiatry funded by the National Institute of Mental Health that integrates clinical and research training. The latter program has served as a model for other teaching institutions.

Martin has helped develop a medical student mentorship program in child psychiatry that has been replicated at 10 other institutions across the nation, and a separate international mentorship program for early career academic psychiatrists.

Martin is editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is co-editor of the fourth edition of Lewis’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Textbook; the forthcoming second edition of Pediatric Psychopharmacology: Principles and Practice; and of Life Is with Others: Selected Writings in Child Psychiatry, which features essays by his late mentor and father-in-law, Donald J. Cohen, M.D., who served as YCSC director from 1983 to 2001.