Dr. Handel steps into Institutional Wellness Officer role
Richard Handel, PhD, has been named EVMS Institutional Wellness Officer, effective Sept. 15. Dr. Handel is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He will take on this role while continuing his responsibilities as the Director of the EVMS Student Mental Health Program. Dr. Handel holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from Kent State University. He completed his internship training in clinical psychology at EVMS.
Dr. Handel has spent his entire professional career on the faculty at EVMS. He started as an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in 2000 following his completion of the EVMS Psychology Internship program. Over the course of his career, he has taught and mentored extensively at EVMS, including in the Doctor of Medicine, Psychiatry Residency and Psychology Internship programs, as well as through the Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology. He previously served in administrative roles for both the psychology internship program (Co-Director) and the VCPCP (Associate Director).
Dr. Handel’s research has been focused in the area of self-report assessment of personality and psychopathology. He is a co-author of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent-Restructured Form (MMPI-A-RF). The MMPI-A-RF is widely-used throughout the United States as a clinical measure of adolescent personality and psychopathology. Moreover, Dr. Handel was the recipient of the 2006 Samuel J. and Anne G. Beck Award for Outstanding Early Career Research in the Field of Personality Assessment from the Society for Personality Assessment and the 2015 Bud Orgel Award for Distinguished Achievement in Research from the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers. He currently serves on multiple scientific journal editorial boards.
In his new position, Dr. Handel hopes to build on the excellent work that has been accomplished to date by the Wellness Committee and the inaugural Institutional Wellness Officer, Serina Neumann, PhD. Dr. Handel will lead the design, direction and implementation of a wellness program that addresses the current environment of burnout among clinicians, health professionals, and staff.
Forging strong ties with various stakeholders, Dr. Handel will lead efforts that foster a well-coordinated, enterprise-wide culture that supports and promotes wellness and professional fulfillment, develops and implements best practices, and identifies opportunities for contemporary approaches to analytics and scholarship. He is particularly interested in building a strong network of ties to nationally-recognized wellness experts with the overarching goal of establishing innovative and empirically-supported wellness programs at EVMS.