Altha J. Stewart, MD

Altha J. Stewart, MD

Dr. Altha J. Stewart is Senior Associate Dean for Community Health Engagement, Director of the Center for Youth Advocacy and Well-Being, and Director of the Division of Public and Community Psychiatry at University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC). She serves as PI/co-PI overseeing grants funded by HHS, DOJ, Robert Wood Johnson and Annie E. Casey Foundations, local philanthropic, governmental and corporate sponsors, and the state of Tennessee. She is responsible for developing services related to outreach efforts in critical health and behavioral health areas facing the local community, including primary care and mental health service access, integrated health/behavioral health, chronic medical conditions (diabetes, hypertension, and cancer), and COVID-19 identified health disparities. As a native Memphian and longstanding leader in community engagement, she has established working relationships with community organizations serving children and families, and strong ties with community health, behavioral health, and social and human service providers across the county to assist with referrals for needed services to address various social determinants of health for marginalized populations in the west Tennessee region. She has long taken a leading role on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in medicine and how discrimination and other social determinants affect a community’s health and well-being. At UTHSC she currently leads research initiatives to identify and address issues related to lack of knowledge and awareness about access to treatment for behavioral health and chronic medical conditions in persistent poverty populations and long-standing systemic health inequities which contribute to the poor health outcomes in these groups.

She is currently President of the American Association for Community Psychiatry and a past President of the American Psychiatric Association, Association of Women Psychiatrists, and Black Psychiatrists of America.

Dr. Stewart has co-edited two volumes of Psychiatric Clinics of North America: Workforce and Diversity in Psychiatry (2022) and Achieving Mental Health Equity (2020), as well as the book, Black Mental Health: Patients, Providers and Systems (2018). Other publications include:

Stewart AJ and Smith MK (chapter). Community consultation and collaboration. In: Textbook of Community Psychiatry. Sowers WE, McQuistion HL, Feldman JM, Ranz JM and Runnels P, eds. Springer, 2022.
Stewart AJ (chapter). Setting the Stage. In: Not Just Bad Kids: The Adversity and Disruptive Behavior Link. Marsh AN and Cox LJ, eds. Elsevier Inc., 2022.
Schwartz D, Stewart AJ, Harris L, Ozdenerol, E, Thomas, F, Johnson, K, Shaban-Nejad, A. The Memphis Pandemic Health Informatics System (MEMPHI-SYS) —Creating a Metropolitan COVID-19 Data Registry Linked Directly to Community Testing to Enhance Population Health Surveillance. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 2022,1-22. doi:10.1017/dmp.2022.284
McCarthy G, Shore S, Ozdenerol E, Stewart AJ, Shaban-Nejad A, Schwartz DL. History Repeating – How Pandemics Collide with Health Disparities in the United States. J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2022 May 20:1–11. doi: 10.1007/s40615-022-01331-5. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35595916; PMCID: PMC9122254.
Stewart AJ. Dismantling Structural Racism in Academic Psychiatry to Achieve Workforce Diversity. Am J Psychiatry, 2021.
Sudak DS and Stewart AJ. “Can We Talk? The Role of Organized Psychiatry in Addressing Structural Racism to Achieve Diversity and Inclusion in Psychiatric Workforce Development.” Academic Psychiatry, 2021.