Children’s Behavioral and Mental Health Chief Awarded Ruane Prize for Child Psychiatry Research

ATLANTA (Oct. 25, 2024) – Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is excited to announce that John Constantino, MD, Chief, Behavioral and Mental Health, is awarded the Ruane Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Research from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation today. Selected by a scientific council, the award is deemed the highest prize in academic child psychiatry in the country, honoring a scientist for their achievements in brain and behavior research. Dr. Constantino leads efforts at Children’s to change the landscape of behavioral and mental health for Georgia’s children and adolescents amidst a growing pediatric mental health crisis, which was declared a national emergency by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2021.

“Being selected to join such an extraordinary group of academic behavioral scientists who have received the Ruane Prize is a highlight of my career,” said Dr. Constantino, who is also the Liz and Frank Blake Chair, Children’s Center for Behavioral and Mental Health. “I look forward to a next wave of discovery efforts that will occur here in Georgia and at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta thanks to the unprecedented investment of our health system in pediatric behavioral and mental health.”

The Ruane prize was initiated in 2000 by philanthropists Joy and William Ruane to recognize important advances in understanding and treatment of early-onset brain and behavior disorders. The prize carries an award of $50,000 and the winner is honored at an annual International Awards Dinner in New York City. The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation is the nation’s top non-governmental funder of mental health research grants, supporting the most innovative ideas in neuroscience and psychiatry.

The event coincides with Dr. Constantino’s most recent publication, “An Architecture for Transformation in Child Mental Health,” an editorial article in JAMA Psychiatry which outlines his roadmap for system transformation in behavioral and mental health currently being implemented at Children’s since his leadership appointment in 2022 as the system’s first Chief of Behavioral and Mental Health. The plan focuses on two main phases: the first establishes a system of care designed to reach tens of thousands of children in Georgia to ensure those at risk for serious adverse mental health outcomes are receiving comprehensive evidence-based intervention. The second is rigorous data collection to assess the cost and impact of this transformed model of care compared to the existing system of care.

Dr. Constantino’s significant scientific contributions leading to this award include critical advances in understanding and improving disorders of social development, including autism and long-term consequences of adverse early life experience. One study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2003 with his mentor, the late Dr. Richard Todd of Washington University in St. Louis, first established that autism is more accurately understood along a spectrum of variation in social behavior using the Social Responsiveness Scale that he and his team developed, as a clinical, educational and research standard for the evaluation autism and related disorders. Another study was published in Nature in 2017 tracing early predictors of family recurrence of autism—discovered at Marcus Autism Center by Ami Klin, PhD, and Warren Jones, PhD—to strong effects of genetic factors responsible for young children’s visual engagement in early social experience. In a landmark article published in Pediatrics in 2020, again with Dr. Ami Klin and Cheryl Klaiman, PhD, of Marcus Autism Center, Dr. Constantino and his colleagues showed serious racial disparities in the long-term outcomes of black Americans with autism were associated with systemic barriers to accessing developmental and educational services in early childhood. In 2023, Dr. Constantino published 10-year outcomes of the largest-reported group of young U.S. foster children to receive two-generation psychiatric support upon reunification with their birth families. The results, reported in the journal Pediatrics, revealed dramatic reductions in the recurrence of child maltreatment in comparison to usual care over the years following reunification with their families.

Under his leadership, these and other advances of the last three decades of discovery in child mental health are being incorporated into the new model of care within the Center for Behavioral and Mental Health at Children’s. Dr. Constantino also holds a faculty appointment with the Emory University School of Medicine as a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Pediatrics, and Genetics. Ami Klin, PhD, Director of the Marcus Autism Center, is a former recipient of the Ruane Prize.