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Congratulations PCMS Installation and Awards Date: Friday, June 17th, 2022 Philadelphia County Medical Society Announces Cristol Award Recipient:
Kenneth M. Certa, MD Kenneth M. Certa, MD, DLFAPA, was born and raised in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Montgomery County, and was the first member of his family to pursue a career in medicine. He completed the accelerated premedical/ medical program operated jointly by the Pennsylvania State University and Jefferson Medical College, now the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. He completed residency training in psychiatry at Jefferson as well and has been on the faculty there since 1985. Dr. Certa is currently the Director of Adult Acute Psychiatric Services at Jefferson. He has worked clinically in emergency room psychiatry consultation, inpatient psychiatric care, and general hospital psychiatry consultation. He also served as the Residency Program Director at Jefferson for fourteen years. It has been through his work in emergency psychiatry that led to his involvement in organized medicine and advocacy. Many individuals with serious mental illness were at risk of catastrophic outcomes due to a lack of available resources, uneven training of emergency medical and law enforcement personnel, and conflicting interpretations of laws governing mental health commitment. Dr. Certa has served on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia County Medical Society; the Executive Council and President of the Philadelphia Psychiatric Society, and later President of the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society. He has also served as a Delegate to the Pennsylvania Medical Society, House of Delegates for many years. At the time of the reorganization of the Pennsylvania Medical Society Board, Dr. Certa advocated successfully for a slotted seat for psychiatry on the board. There is no health without mental health, and the House of Delegates agreed that the presence of psychiatry on the PAMED board would help inform the actions of the medical society, especially concerning advocacy. He served as the first Psychiatry Trustee for ten years.
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Philadelphia Medicine : Summer 2022
During his tenure on the PAMED board, the American Medical Association also changed the representation of specialty societies in its House of Delegates. Due to the importance of Pennsylvania to the AMA mission, Dr. Certa was named to the delegation from the American Psychiatric
