Ayana Jordan

Ayana Jordan is an American addiction psychiatrist. She is an assistant professor of psychiatry and the director of the Global Mental Health Program at Yale School of Medicine. Jordan is a physician attending at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. Jordan's global mental health research explores the link between mental illness, substance use disorders, and stigma in Sierra Leone. Jordan is an elected Early Career Psychiatrist Trustee-at-Large for the American Psychiatric Association and a 2018 Hampton University Forty Under 40 Society member.
Early life and education
Jordan was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1997, Jordan completed her undergraduate studies at Hampton University, a historically black university in Hampton, Virginia. During her undergraduate degree, Ayana majored in Biology and studied abroad in Helsinki, Finland where she researched hantaviruses.
Jordan completed a Masters of Science in pathology in 2006 at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Jordan first explored how AKT3 signalling impacts T cell-mediated suppression in autoimmune encephalitis models. She found that AKT3 both protects mice against EAE and leads to less regulatory T cells in the CNS compartment. She found that NFAT-regulated gene expression leads to Treg-mediated suppression of effector T-cells.
Residency
Jordan completed her residency training in general adult psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, working to create an inclusive environment. During her residency, Jordan served as Program-Wide Chief and developed her passion for treating substance use disorders due to observing the stigma against drug users in other medical disciplines. She completed her residency in 2015, continuing to a fellowship in addiction psychiatry at Yale. Jordan is an attending physician at the Connecticut Mental Health Center.
Equity and inclusion
Jordan directs the Social Justice and Health Equity curriculum at Yale.
Jordan is a medical director of the REACH (Recognizing and Eliminating disparities in Addiction through Culturally-informed Healthcare) program at Yale which aims to increase the number of underrepresented and minority healthcare providers working in addiction as well as educate the current and future workforce on how to provide the best care and improve outcome for all patients in a culturally-informed way.
Jordan has been an active participant in social media campaigns such as #ShareTheMicNowMed, which aims amplify the voices of Black women in medicine and diversify online conversations.
Faith-based mental health treatment
Jordan works with black churches in the Connecticut area to educate and treat the community to prevent substance use disorders. She leads the faith-based response to the Opioid Crisis Committee, which increases the accessibility of mental health treatment to black church community members and has been shown to decrease the instances and severity of substance use disorders. As a resident in 2013 and 2014, Jordan returned to Sierra Leone and further recognized the need to address the severe mental health issues and stigma that resulted from the children being forced to take drugs to reduce their power to fight back while succumbing to acts of violence. Jordan has continued to travel to Sierra Leone since this trip to further study the connections between mental health, substance use disorders and stigma in Kono and Freetown. Jordan explained in court that Nelson Kargbo’s mental illness would worsen and he would be severely stigmatized if her returned to the country. She serves as one of many mental health professionals that facilitate Stress and Resilience Town Halls as part of the Yale response to COVID-19. Jordan was featured on MedPage Today discussing the increasing implementation of telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Leadership
In 2018, Jordan was elected to the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association as an Early Career Psychiatrist. She is on the faculty in the Career Development Institute for Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh which aims to train the future psychiatrists.
Awards and honors
* 2019 Early Career Psychiatrist Trustee-at-Large for the American Psychiatry Association
* 2019 Inspiration Award Honoree by the American Medical Association
* 2019 Editorial Advisory Board of The Lancet Psychiatry
* 2018 Class of the Hampton University Forty Under 40 Society
* 2017 American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology (ASCP) New Investigator’s Award
* 2016 Career Development Institute (CDI) Award (partnership between Univ of Pittsburgh and Stanford)
* 2014 International Travel Fellowship from the Association of Women Psychiatrists
* 2013 American Psychiatric Association/American Psychiatric Leadership (APA/APL) Fellow
* Ross, D, Boatright, D, Nunez-Smith, M, Jordan, A, Chekroud, A, Johnson, MK, Moore, E., “Racial and gender disparities in the National Resident Matching Program revealed through textual analysis of Medical Student Performance Evaluations: an observational study.” PLOS One, 2017 August 09:12(8):e0181659
* Brian Abe, Ayana Jordan, Vanessa Hubbard "Transcriptional Regulation of Tolerance" Chapter of The Epigenetics of Autoimmune Disease, Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2008.<ref name=":9" />
* Jordan, A. Mechanisms of T Helper Cell Suppression by Regulatory T cells, Publisher ProQuest/UMI Publishing. 2009.<ref name=":9" />
* A Resident’s Guide to Surviving Psychiatric Training, Jordan, A, Delanoche, N., Dickstein, L.J., Foreman, T., Garakani, A., Richards, M., American Psychiatric Association; 3rd edition, December 2015.<ref name=":9" />
* Cynthia Bradley-King and Ayana Jordan. “The impact of child sexual abuse on African Americans; in Contemporary Issues for People of Color: Surviving and Thriving in the U.S. Today. “ABC-CLIO Publishing, 2016.<ref name=":9" />
* Teofilo E. Matos and Ayana Jordan “Motivational Interviewing: Engaging” Chapter 3 of Motivational Interviewing for Clinical Practice, Publisher: American Psychiatric Publishing, Incorporated. January 23, 2017.<ref name=":9" />
* Ransome Y, Haeny AM, McDowell YE, Jordan A. Religious involvement and racial disparities in opioid use disorder between 2004-2005 and 2012-2013: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Drug Alcohol Depend. 2019;205:107615. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2019.107615<ref name=":9" />
* James K, Jordan A. The Opioid Crisis in Black Communities. J Law Med Ethics. 2018;46(2):404-421. doi:10.1177/1073110518782949<ref name=":9" />

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu