Dr. Wallack personally trained more than 70 C-L Psychiatry Fellows, many of whom are now in leadership positions nationally and internationally
ACLP has presented the 2023 Distinguished Service Award to Joel Wallack, MD, FACLP, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Emeritus Chief of C-L Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center.
Dr. Wallack was nominated by Philip Bialer, MD, FACLP. He says: ”In addition to being my C-L Fellowship training director, Dr. Wallack was my primary mentor in my early career and has remained a valued colleague throughout my subsequent endeavors.“
Dr. Wallack has been a member of the Academy since 1983 (40 years) and is now a Life Fellow. He has held numerous committee positions, including an appointee to the original Academy Governance Subcommittee; and serving on the Annual Scientific Program Committee and subcommittees several times for both oral papers and posters, and symposia and workshops.
He was one of the original appointees to the Future Meeting Sites Planning Committee which selected locations and planned for annual meetings; he served as a Webb Fellowship mentor and was a member of, and chaired, the Standards and Ethics Subcommittee from 1997-1999 and again in 2005-2009, during which time he redesigned the Academy’s academic disclosure policy and system. He has presented on numerous occasions at the annual meetings and has served on the Fellowship Education Subcommittee and as the senior mentor for the Early Career Psychiatrists Subcommittee.
During the Academy’s early and arduous attempts to gain subspecialty status in the 1990s, Dr. Wallack was appointed to the original task force for C-L Psychiatry subspecialization, as well as to the task force to establish the Academy’s very first standards for C-L Psychiatry Fellowship training.
Dr. Wallack was also appointed to be an original member of the Committee to Review and Accredit C-L Programs. During that period, he personally surveyed every C-L Psychiatry Fellowship in the US to gather comprehensive information on their training programs, and personally created the Academy’s first directory of C-L Psychiatry Fellowship programs.
As president-elect and then president of the Society for Liaison Psychiatry (SLP) he worked closely with Troy Thompson, MD, FACLP, president of the Academy 1991-92, and the Council (now Board) to have the SLP join forces with the Academy to bolster Academy membership and strength and more successfully lobby the ABPN and ACGME to recognize our specialty.
During his career, Dr. Wallack served as director of C-L Psychiatry at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City where he created and directed the C-L Fellowship Program, and also created one of the two first AIDS Psychiatry Fellowship programs in the US. As deputy director and clinical director of Psychiatry at NYU/Bellevue Hospital Center, he created the C-L Fellowship program at NYU. Also, while serving as chair of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Cabrini Medical Center, he created and co-directed the C-L Psychiatry Fellowship programs.
Dr Wallack has personally trained more than 70 C-L Psychiatry Fellows, many of whom are now in leadership positions nationally and internationally—including Kenneth Ashley, MD, FACLP, and past ACLP presidents Maria Tiamson-Kassab, MD, FACLP (2020-2021); and Phillip Bialer, MD, FACLP (2021-2022).
Dr. Wallack has been honored to receive several awards in the past, including the SLP Psychiatry Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to C-L Psychiatry, the NYU/Bellevue Academic Excellence Award, and the Mount Sinai Zirinsky Award for Excellence in Research Mentoring.