Distinguished Career Award for Practice & Training Recipient: Jarrod Leffler, PhD, ABPP

2024 Distinguished Career Award for Practice and Training Recipient: Jarrod Leffler, PhD, ABPP

The SCCAP Distinguished Career Award for Practice and Training recognizes a clinical child and adolescent practitioner who has made a significant and enduring impact on promoting awareness, accessibility, and/or implementation of evidence-based mental health services for youth. This recognition highlights the outstanding work of currently practicing clinicians who take scientifically derived clinical knowledge and promote, provide, or share it on a broader scale, particularly with members of diverse, vulnerable, or underserved groups. An award review committee, including Ashley M. Shaw, Ph.D. and Michelle E. Roley-Roberts, Ph.D. reviewed the outstanding applications for this award.

SCCAP is thrilled to announce that the 2024 winner of this award is Jarrod Leffler, PhD, ABPP, Chair of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychology and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Leffler has made a significant local, state, national, and global impact regarding increasing awareness, accessibility, and dissemination of a range of evidence-based practices for youth. He is well-versed in a range of evidence-based practices, including cognitive-behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, interpersonal therapy, and mindfulness. Dr. Leffler completed his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Saint Louis University. Over his 20 years of experience since obtaining his PhD, he has worked in many roles (e.g., clinical psychologist, researcher, trainer, clinical director, consultant) in three different states (Virginia, Minnesota, and Ohio), and is licensed in all three states.

In terms of promoting awareness, Dr. Leffler has worked with community providers, schools, and local and state agencies to advocate for and promote the implementation, measurement, and utilization of evidence-based assessments and treatments. In terms of increasing accessibility, between 2012 and 2021, Dr. Leffler directed the Child and Adolescent Integrated Mood Program (CAIMP) at the Mayo Clinic. Through CAIMP, he was responsible for intensive treatment of youth from the United States and seven other countries. The CAIMP program he developed was found to be bold effective and fiscally sustainable. Currently, he is working with the Virginia governor’s office to increase day program capacity, and address patient volumes in the emergency department and inpatient units in Richmond. He is also working to expand the two-week intensive treatment program he developed to youth in foster care and spread dialectical behavioral therapy’s reach to more high schoolers.

In terms of promoting implementation, he has had multiple leadership roles training others (e.g., interns) in evidence-based treatments and has developed a multidisciplinary training program for social work, psychology, and psychiatry trainees in evidence-based assessment and treatment. He also does consultation with other hospitals around program development and implementation. Importantly, he frequently disseminates his work in journals and has a handbook in preparation.

In sum, through his many hats, we thank Dr. Leffler for the substantial impact he has made on families with lived experiences of mental illness, behavioral health clinicians, and mental health organizations. SCCAP heartily congratulates Dr. Leffler on his achievement and receipt of this prestigious award!