An endowment and fellowship established by Robert H. and Nancy Jeffrey will help foster an ongoing collaboration between Columbus Childrens Hospital and Ohio State University Medical Center and also attract to Columbus some of the countrys most talented mental health professionals early in their careers.
The Jeffrey Endowment in Academic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Jeffrey Postdoctoral Fellowship in Academic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry will provide each institution $1 million to attract physicians to Columbus who are specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. The endowment and fellowship will allow physicians excelling in their careers the ability to pursue activities relevant to advancing the quality of mental health services for children and adolescents with mental disorders.
Dr. John Campo, director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, a recent collaboration between Childrens and Ohio State, said the endowment and fellowship opportunities will enhance the divisions ability to attract physicians who are among the best in the nation. The generosity of the Jeffrey family benefits Childrens and Ohio State and also has the potential to greatly improve the mental health care of children and families throughout the region, in part by catalyzing local efforts to establish a nationally recognized center for pediatric psychiatry here in Columbus, he said.
Robert Tad Jeffrey has been involved heavily with Childrens Hospital, which his great-grandmother Celia helped found; he has remained a trustee there for 38 years. Nancy Jeffrey has served on both the Community Mental Health System and the State Advisory Boards, and today is chair of the OSU-Harding Behavioral Health Board, as well as an ex-officio member of the University Hospitals Board.
Bringing together the psychiatric services of these two organizations has created a critical mass of researchers, clinicians and educators needed to produce a national center for innovation in child and adolescent care and education, observes Dr. Radu Saveanu, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and executive director of OSU Harding Hospital.