ABOUT US

REACH Board of Directors (Director/CEO)

Peter S. Jensen, MD, Chief Executive Officer

The REACH Institute

Dr. Peter Jensen currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of The REACH Institute.  Prior to assuming this role Dr. Jensen served as the Founding Director of the Center for the Advancement of Children’s Mental Health (CACMH) at Columbia University, where he also held the endowed chair as the Ruane Professor of Child Psychiatry at Columbia University (2000-2007).  Before coming to Columbia University, Dr. Jensen was the Associate Director of Child and Adolescent Research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), where he served from 1989 to 2000. While at NIMH, Dr. Jensen served as the lead investigator on the landmark study of Multimodal Treatment of ADHD (“The MTA Study”).  

Dr. Jensen is a world-renowned child psychiatrist, and has spent the past 28 years being a passionate advocate and voice for children and families with children suffering from emotional and behavioral disorders.  His major areas of work and research include identifying, disseminating, and implementing evidence-based mental health treatments in real world settings, and the adoption of best practices by health care practitioners, parents, schools, and other mental health organizations.  He is also a sought-out expert on child and adolescent ADHD (Attention- Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), child & adolescent depression, and child psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, and epidemiology.

Dr. Jensen serves on many editorial and scientific advisory boards, is the author of over 200 scientific articles and book chapters, and has written or co-edited 12 books on children’s mental health.  He is currently authoring an 11-book series on helping parents “make the system work” for their children who suffer from various health, emotional, and behavioral disorders. His numerous awards include the Norbert Reiger Award (1990 and 1996) from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Agnes Purcell McGavin Award (1996) and the Blanche Ittleson Award (1998) from the American Psychiatric Association, and Special Recognition Awards from the American Psychological Association and the Association for Child Psychiatric Nursing.  In 1999 he received the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from NAMI (the National Alliance for the Mental Ill) and was inducted into the Hall of Fame for CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.)  In 2000, he received the Outstanding Mentor Award, as well as the Elaine Schlosser Lewis Award for ADHD research from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

In 1974, Dr. Jensen received his bachelor’s degree with high honors from Brigham Young University, earned his medical degree from George Washington University Medical School in 1978, and went on to his post-graduate training in psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and at Letterman Army Medical Center.