Cynthia Chatterjee, MD MA FASAM, is a board member of ISAM. She is board-certified in Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine and a graduate of UCSF School of Medicine. She completed her Psychiatry residency at Stanford University School of Medicine.

 

Dr. Chatterjee moved to Illinois last year from California, where she was active in the California Society of Addiction Medicine (CSAM) and chaired the CSAM 2020 State of the Art Conference. She retired last year from San Mateo County Health, where she had worked since 2008, most recently as Interim Medical Director and Deputy Medical Director in the division of Behavioral Health and Recovery Services (BHRS). BHRS offers outpatient, inpatient, residential, rehabilitation, withdrawal management, and medication for addiction treatment for the safety net population of San Mateo County, serving an average of 15,000 individuals annually. Prior to these positions, she was a BHRS lead psychiatrist for a mental health team embedded in Primary Care. She expanded services on the team to include treatment for addiction. She also founded an Addiction Medicine work group that included the Public Health Officer, physicians from the ED, Psychiatry, and Primary Care, therapists, and case managers. This group successfully advocated for the prescribing of buprenorphine in the ED, Primary Care, Mental Health Clinics, and the two jails, and wrote guidelines for extended-release naltrexone for alcohol use disorder and benzodiazepine tapers.

 

Dr. Chatterjee loves teaching, and in addition to teaching BHRS Psychiatry residents and providing numerous trainings throughout San Mateo County Health, she served for several years on the Adjunct Clinical Faculty for Stanford Psychiatry and Behavioral Services and is currently a Volunteer Clinical Assistant Professor for USCF Department of Psychiatry. She has been active on ISAM’s Policy Committee and is looking forward to dedicating more time to advocacy work in her retirement years.