Mental health and substance-related issues affect the lives of more than a billion people worldwide. Convergence Mental Health explores novel financing mechanisms like social impact bonds and other blended finance vehicles to address the global shortage of providers and the lack of effective treatments. By realigning risk across the public, non-profit, and private sectors, innovative finance can help advance mental health technology to improve outcomes and the health
of our society." - Tracy Palandjian, Co-founder and CEO, Social Finance, Vice Chair, U.S. Impact Investing Alliance
Harris A. Eyre, MBBS PhD, is a Brain Health Venture Executive, Diplomat and Author. He is President and Chief Medical Officer of Prodeo, which specializes in the commercialization of brain health technologies. Harris is focus on catalyzing transformational change in the brain health sector by leveraging frontier technologies, entrepreneurship, responsible innovation, convergence science and diplomacy.
Michael Berk is an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellow at Deakin University, where he heads the IMPACT institute. He is listed by Thompson Reuters as amongst the world's most influential scientific minds (2015-2019) and was awarded the Brain & Behaviour (NARSAD) Colvin Award for Mood Disorders in 2015 and the Victoria Prize for life sciences in 2019. He is past president of the International Society for Bipolar Disorders and the Australasian Society for Bipolar and Depressive Disorders.
His major interests are in the discovery and implementation of novel therapies.
Helen Lavretsky, MD, MS is a professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute and the Department of Psychiatry at UCLA. She directs the Integrative psychiatry research and clinical program. She is a geriatric and integrative psychiatrist with a research program in novel treatments for geriatric depression and integrative mental health using mind-body interventions. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of
the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. She is the recipient of the 2020 Jack Weinberg APA award for career in geriatric psychiatry and the American College of Psychiatrists research award in geriatric psychiatry.
Charles F. Reynolds III, MD, is a NIH-sponsored physician-scientist addressing prevention and treatment of depression in older adults in primary care and specialty mental health settings, in high-, middle-,and low-income countries. Recipient of the 2016 Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Herbert Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health; and of an NIMH MERIT award and Research Scientist Award. Elected member, Association of American Physicians. Editor-in-Chief: American Journal of
Geriatric Psychiatry. Previous service on three Institute of Medicine study panels and on the NIMH National Advisory Mental Health Council; and past President of the American College of Psychiatrists, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and the American Association for Geriatric
Psychiatry.