Gail A. Edelsohn, MD, MSPH
Gail A. Edelsohn, M.D., M.S.P.H is Senior Medical Officer with Community Care Behavioral Health, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Jefferson Medical College, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Temple University School of Medicine.
From 2005-2011 she served as Associate Medical Director for Children’s Services in the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual DisAbility Services (DBHIDS). She has worked closely with city’s leadership and cross systems partnership to address behavioral health needs. She has collaborated with Philadelphia Family Court and has provided in service education for masters and judges regarding the use of medication in children, behavioral health evaluations of delinquent and dependent youth, and least restrictive services. Dr. Edelsohn has been a member of a number of work groups involving access and quality issues in outpatient services, early childhood behavioral consultation (preschool/childcare), needs of youth in dependent and delinquent placement, responding to those who are victims of community violence, and has served as a member of Act 33 team, reviewing fatalities and near fatalities of children who have become known to child welfare. Dr. Edelsohn was instrumental in developing a policy bulletin issued by the public behavioral health managed care organization that raised the bar regarding key elements of informed consent regarding the use of psychotropic medication in children.
She has had a long- standing commitment to public psychiatry, teaching and patient care and served as Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, at Thomas Jefferson University for 14 years prior to her tenure with the City of Philadelphia. During that time, she spent 8 years providing direct service as well as child psychiatry supervision in the county’s only designated psychiatric emergency service for children and youth. Prior to her time in Philadelphia, she held a joint appointment for 7 years at Johns Hopkins University in the School of Public Health and in the Medical School where she directed the child and adolescent psychiatry residency program, collaborated on prevention research, and cared for patients in the Hopkins affiliated children’s community mental health center.
Dr. Edelsohn has served as a reviewer for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry since 1997 and since 2006 has been on the editorial board. She is active member of her local Regional Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of Eastern PA and Southern New Jersey has secured AACAP advocacy grants, served as Secretary, President, and as an Assembly Delegate. Dr. Edelsohn is the Chair of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Committee for the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society. She was the recipient in 2002 of the Community Service Award from her Regional Council and in 2008 received The Edward Lawlor Award, for Public Service and Advocacy, Philadelphia Psychiatric Society. Dr. Edelsohn is a Fellow of AACAP and a Distinguished Fellow of APA. She values teaching and clinical supervision and is on the volunteer faculty of the departments of psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University and Temple University.
Dr. Edelsohn graduated from Temple University School of Medicine, and completed her adult and child psychiatry residencies at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill. She completed a Fellowship in Preventive Medicine and obtained a Masters of Science in Public Health at UNC. She is board certified in adult and child and adolescent psychiatry.