Spearman-McCarthy honored by professional associations

E. Vanessa Spearman-McCarthy, MD, an internist/psychiatrist and associate dean for learner diversity, equity and inclusion at the Medical College of Georgia, has been honored by three separate professional associations for her contributions to medicine.

She is the recipient of the 2022 American Medical Women’s Association, or AMWA, INSPIRE Award, given by the association’s Leadership Council to honor women physicians who are inspirational and who demonstrate vision, integrity, collaboration and service. She also received the 2022 Association of Medicine and Psychiatry, or AMP, President’s Award, which is that organization’s highest award.

Additionally, she received the 2022 Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry’s Special Recognition Award and was appointed to serve a two-year term on the group’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee at its annual meeting this month in Atlanta.

A national advocate for diversity and inclusion, Spearman-McCarthy serves on the AMWA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. She chairs the AMP’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and serves as a councilor and member of the association’s Planning Committee. In January 2022, she was appointed to serve on the Association of American Medical College’s Constructing an Equitable, Inclusive and Antiracist Learning Environment Working Group.

She serves on the advisory board for the Diversity in Addiction Research Training (DART) Program at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, where she completed her internal medicine/psychiatry residency, and chairs the Health and Wellness Committee for the National Alumnae Association of Spelman College, her undergraduate alma mater.

An associate professor in the departments of psychiatry and health behavior and medicine and a 2005 MCG graduate, she serves as the medical director of the Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Service at the medical school’s teaching affiliate AU Health System. The service focuses on the treatment of patients with comorbid psychiatric and general medical conditions. An avid educator, Spearman-McCarthy teaches MCG students physical diagnosis and case-based learning. In the clinical setting, she supervises the psychiatry clerkship for third- and fourth-year medical students, as well as general psychiatry residents, addiction medicine fellows and internal medicine residents in the Medicine Continuity Clinic.

Spearman-McCarthy is an adviser to the Department of Psychiatry’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, chairs the MCG Faculty Senate’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and serves as a member of the MCG Graduate Medical Education Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Health Disparities Subcommittee.

She is co-advisor to the MCG Chapter of the Student National Medical Association as well as to the MCG Inclusivity Council. She is also an advisor to the Latino Medical Student Association, the MCG Med/Psych Interest Group and the Augusta University Minority Association of Premedical Students.

An honored educator and clinician, she was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and has been inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. She was recently honored with the Leadership Award from the MCG Chapter of the Group on Women in Medicine and Science.

She is a past recipient of the AMP’s Roger Kathol Pioneering Spirit Award, the Leonard Tow Humanism Award, the MCG Faculty Senate Patient Care Award, the Patient Family Centered Services Impact Award, the Patient and Family Centered Services Partnership Award, the MCG Department of Psychiatry’s Educator of the Year Award and several MCG Exemplary Teaching Awards.