The American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA) Executive Committee has selected Paula T. Trzepacz, MD, FANPA to receive the 2024 Gary J Tucker MD Lifetime Achievement Award in Neuropsychiatry. This, ANPA’s most prestigious award, recognizes Dr. Trzepacz’ more than three decades of leadership, commitment, mentoring, scholarship, and service to ANPA, to our field, and to the patients and families served by our association and its members. 

Dr. Trzepacz’ career as a neuropsychiatrist, consultation-liaison psychiatrist, and geriatric psychiatrist has included academic and industry roles, in both of which her work has been transformative. During her tenure as an academician at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, the University of Mississippi Medical School, and, currently, as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Indiana University School of Medicine, she performed clinical research aimed at improving the identification and treatment of delirium. She developed the Delirium Rating Scale and its progeny, the Delirium Rating Scale-Revised-98 and Delirium Diagnostic Tool-Provisional, which are among the most widely used delirium assessment scales worldwide. She has published more than 160 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, 35 book chapters, and three medical textbooks, which have been cited collectively more than 12,000 times. She served as Chair of the ANPA Education Committee from 1997-2002, during which time she initiated efforts to develop a curriculum for neuropsychiatry subspecialty training and credentialing. These efforts helped lay the foundation on which ANPA and the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology built the Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry subspecialty under the auspices of the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties. During her tenure as President of the American Neuropsychiatric Association (2009-2011), she facilitated the reorganization of ANPA’s governance model into its present form, and particularly the creation of the ANPA Council. She also spearheaded the creation of the award honoring Dr. Tucker which is now conferred upon her.

In her roles in industry, she served at Eli Lilly and Company for over 15 years, where she was most recently a Senior Medical Fellow in neurosciences drug development. Her work included participation on the global drug development team for Amyvid, the PET radiotracer for cerebral beta-amyloid plaque density estimation, and on teams leading multiple neurotherapeutic clinical trials for conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and agitation and aggression in Alzheimer’s disease, among many others. She continues this work presently as President and Chief Executive Officer of conXiome, LLC.

Dr. Trzepacz also is an original and longtime member of the editorial board of the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, ANPA’s official journal, for which she remains a regular contributor and peer reviewer. She also has been a highly valued mentor of and counselor to multiple ANPA presidents and committee chairs over the last 15 years.

Dr. Trzepacz will receive the Gary J Tucker MD Lifetime Achievement Award in Neuropsychiatry during the upcoming ANPA annual meeting in Houston, TX (March 6-9, 2024). She will deliver the Gary J Tucker MD Award Lecture, the focus of which will be the neuropsychiatry of delirium.

ANPA is deeply grateful for Dr. Trzepacz’ service to our association and our field and for her dedication to ANPA’s mission “to improve the lives of persons with disorders at the interface of psychiatry and neurology.” Please join the ANPA Executive Committee in congratulating Dr. Trzepacz on her award.