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Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, joined NKI as a Research Psychiatrist in 2022. Dr. Jordan is an Addiction Psychiatrist and the Barbara Wilson Endowed Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, with a secondary appointment in Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Pillar Co-Lead for Community Engagement at NYU Langone’s Institute for Excellence in Health Equity. She is dedicated to creating spaces and opportunities for more people of color, specifically Black women in academia who are vastly underrepresented. The fundamental message of equity and inclusion has informed her research, clinical work, and leadership duties at NYU and beyond. For instance, Dr. Jordan was the first Black Associate Program Director for the Yale Psychiatry Residency, her immediate past academic home, supervising a large group of 64 physicians providing mental health and addiction services throughout Yale medical systems in the state of Connecticut.
She recently became Director of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiative for the Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network within the National Institute of Drug (Ab)use, where she’ll be working to improve health outcomes for people with opioid use disorder in the carceral system. Dr. Jordan also serves as the medical director of Recognizing and Eliminating disparities in Addiction through Culturally informed Healthcare or (REACH), a Substance (Ab)use and Mental Health Services Administration grant, in conjunction with the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, geared toward increasing the number of addiction specialists from racial and ethnic minoritized populations who obtain training to provide culturally informed addiction treatment. Passionate about helping racial and ethnic minoritized people achieve wellness and recovery from substance use disorders, Dr. Jordan was fully drawn to community-based research. Dr. Jordan is an NIH-funded researcher where she studies long term outcomes for providing addiction treatment in faith settings.
She is elated and inspired to exist in an environment supportive of her vision to work with communities, integrating the cultural and religious aspects of people’s lives, while also addressing structural inequities that impede improved mental health and wellness. She is deeply grateful to be taking care of the most historically excluded patients during this time, who are facing extreme challenges in obtaining addiction treatment due to COVID-19. Dr. Jordan is the proud recipient of various clinical and research awards and was inducted into the Top 40 under 40 society by her undergraduate alma mater, Hampton University, a historically Black institution.