While clozapine has demonstrated unique efficacy for the treatment of serious mental illness, its real-world use presents challenges to clinicians in a variety of settings, leading to its under-utilization. These challenges can best be addressed by understanding the benefits and risks of clozapine, its place in treatment, and the barriers that impact clozapine treatment. In addition to identifying specific barriers, this webinar offers a series of recommendations for a variety of stakeholders that, if implemented, would promote access to clozapine, address barriers to its use, and improve the management of patients receiving clozapine. This webinar is a result of a paper also called "Clozapine Underutilization: Addressing the Barriers."
We want to thank SAMHSA and it's support for the paper and this webinar. Specifically we want to thank Kana Enomoto and Paolo del Vecchio. It was through discussions with them that we started work on this important topic. We also want to recognize Anita Everett, who will be starting as the new chief medical officer for SAMHSA in September. She is aware of this project and has offered her support.
We would like to thank Dr. Fuller Torrey and Dr. Doris Fuller for their support for this project. Dr. Torrey wrote a paper in November, 2015 drawing attention to the underutilization of clozapine. His paper was reviewed by the Medical Directors division and is one of the reasons for their decision to take up this topic and to write the paper and move forward with this project. Dr. Torrey recently participated in the NASMHPD annual commissioners meeting and presented on this subject.
We would like to thank the Medical Directors division for promoting this as an issue and in participating in the discussion and writing of the paper. The medical directors have a rich tradition of developing papers on important topics. This goes back to Tom Hester from Georgia and more recently to Joe Parks from Missouri and their leadership in the Medical Directors division. The representatives from the medical Directors division included Kathy Sanders from Massachusetts, Andrew J. McLean from North Dakota, Dale K. Adair from Pennsylvania, and Brian Sims from NASMHPD.
We also want to thank the NASMHPD staff for their work on this project. specifically Brian Sims, David Miller, Aaron Walker, Stuart Gordon, Genna Bloomer, Meighan Haupt and Kelle Masten.
The Co-Primary Authors of the paper are Raymond C. Love, Deanna Kelly, Oliver Freudenreich, and MacKenzie A. Sayer.
We are fortunate to have two of those individuals present this webinar: Ray Love and Deanna Kelly.