Redding Board of Finance chairman Kim Yonkers has been promoted to director of psychological medicine service at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She was previously interim director of psychological medicine service.
In her new role, Yonkers supervises the delivery of clinical psychiatric and psychological services at two campuses of the hospital, York Street and St. Raphael. Both are located in New Haven.
Yonkers also supervises the clinical and psychiatric services that are provided to the Yale primary care clinic, bariatric clinic, transplant clinic, HIV and AIDS clinic, sickle cell anemia clinic, spine center and cancer center.
“It is a busy service,” Yonkers said. “We provide over 5,000 consultations to other medical services at Yale-New Haven hospital annually. This is just the inpatient side.”
Correlation to Board role
Yonkers said her work at Yale “informs” her position on the Redding Board of Finance.
“I have to develop and manage large, multi-million dollar budgets for research and clinical care. This experience helps inform my work at the BOF,” said Yonkers, a Democrat who has served on the Board of Finance since 2010. “As well, leadership tasks are critical for both roles.”
Yonkers and her husband, Charles Landau, have lived in Redding for 16 years and are the parents of triplets: Ethan, Justin and Arielle Landau, all of whom just completed their first year in college. Charles Landau is an interventional cardiologist who works at Bridgeport Hospital and the Hospital of Saint Raphael.
Yonkers has a bachelor’s degree in political science and women’s studies from Amherst College in Mass., and a medical degree from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York.
She’s a professor in the departments of psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive sciences, and in the division of chronic disease epidemiology.
Yonkers is responsible for teaching residents at the hospital’s department of psychiatry. Residents rotate through both campuses and she sees them at the York Street location.
“Our service is a core rotation for medical students and psychiatric residents,” she said. “We provide didactics and on-site, bedside teaching. Students and trainees rotate through my service and residents will typically spend two months there.”
Additional roles
Yonkers is also the director of the Center for Wellbeing of Women and Mothers, a women’s-only research program.
In addition, she’s director of research and faculty development for Yale-New Haven’s Department of Psychiatry. In this role, she works on how to best manage in-patients who have behavioral health disorders such as depression, delirium, dementia, and substance misuse and abuse.
“We will follow patients along with their primary team to ensure that these co-occurring medical problems are adequately treated while their general medical or surgical problem is treated,” Yonkers said.
She also serves as a mentor and teacher to faculty. “I will guide them in methods for writing manuscripts and grants, in how to develop as a presenter, and the particulars of promotion,” Yonkers said.
There was a year-long competitive search for Yonkers’ new position, which she said is a substantial promotion for her.
“I am moving from directing a research program to directing a large clinical division in the department,” she said. “While I have been an active mentor to people in my research program and outside of it, I am [now] responsible for mentoring and development of nearly 30 faculty. My clinical administration entails program development, improvement, staffing, and ensuring that we provide excellent clinical care.”
Current projects
In her new position, one project Yonkers is working on is further developing Yale’s cancer center services.
“We are developing a program that will allow us to identify in-patients who need behavioral health services such as treatment of depression and anxiety, and follow them from the inpatient setting into the outpatient setting,” she said.
Yonkers said she would also like to develop a women’s behavioral health program.
“We currently have research programs, but I would like to develop psychiatric services for pregnant and postpartum women who have difficulty with depression, anxiety and substance use,” she said. “The program would provide services to patients who are receiving reproductive health care at our center and need behavioral health care as well.”
Yonkers said her new position provides her with a “further opportunity to grow in terms of both academic leadership and administration.”