Former UC San Francisco faculty member Russell B. Lemle, PhD, who retired in 2019 from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences as a health sciences clinical professor, will be recognized by the American Psychological Association (APA) with one of the group’s highest distinctions, the 2024 APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest.
Lemle, who also served as a psychologist at the San Francisco VA Health Care System for 38 years (including 25 as chief psychologist), is being honored in recognition of his sustained groundbreaking efforts to move firearm-related suicide prevention efforts forward. His achievements—which include establishing lethal means safety counseling training in the Department of Veterans Affairs; conducting the first national firearm suicide conferences and initial firearm industry stakeholder roundtables; and conducting public outreach through unprecedented editorials in popular firearms magazines, testifying before the U.S. Congress, and the creation of Gun Storage Check Week—have played a key role in fostering common cause across the political divide.
The APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest was established in 1978 to recognize persons who have advanced psychology as a science and profession by a single extraordinary achievement or a lifetime of outstanding contributions in the public interest. Two awards are given annually—the first to a psychologist who has made a significant contribution to the public interest in the early stages of his or her career, and the second to a senior psychologist.
Lemle is now a senior policy analyst and co-founder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. He remains a passionate advocate and continues to author scores of analyses, articles, and opinion pieces focusing on nurturing common ground across the political divide on the prevention of firearm suicide and the existential threat to the VA posed by the outsourcing of veterans’ health care to the private sector. He was a member of the White House veterans suicide prevention task force and has testified to Congress on those issues as well.
He has been recognized with multiple distinguished career and lifetime advocacy awards from the APA (including a presidential citation and the Division 18 Harold Hildredth Award), Association of VA Psychologist Leaders (AVAPL, including the Antonette Zeiss Distinguished Leadership Award and the Patrick DeLeon Advocacy Award), and Disabled American Veterans. In 2017, he also the inaugural recipient of the AVAPL Russell B. Lemle Leadership Award, which was established in recognition of his pivotal influence in elevating psychologists’ role in improving veterans’ mental health care.
Lemle will formally receive the award during the 2024 American Psychological Association/American Psychological Foundation Virtual Awards Ceremony on Thursday, Oct. 24. Registration is now open for those who would like to watch the event on Zoom.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation’s foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a focus on providing unparalleled patient care, conducting impactful research, training the next generation of behavioral health leaders, and advancing diversity, health equity, and community across the field.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Health medical centers and community hospitals across San Francisco; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. “Sandy” Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
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