Practice Update for the Management of ADHD in Primary Care

Session 3 of the Northeast PA AHEC Navigating Youth Behavior Virtual Lunch & Learn Series

Date: September 18, 2024

Speaker: James Waxmonsky, MD Dr. James Waxmonsky is a graduate of Cornell University. He completed medical school and general psychiatry residency training at SUNY Buffalo and child fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University. Over the past 20 years, he has worked in academics, clinical, and research. He has published over 90 peer reviewed articles or book chapters and supported over 40 different research trials for medication. He has received several awards and honors throughout his career, most recently AACAP Elaine Schlosser Lewis Award for Research on Attention-Deficit Disorder for best paper in the field of ADHD published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He has been invited to present at numerous symposiums and lectures, most recently at the American Academy of Pediatrics on the topic of ‘Setting up Behavioral health Collaborative Care in Pediatric Primary Care.’ He is currently the Division Chief of Child Adolescent Psychiatry at the Hershey Medical Center, the University Chair in Child Psychiatry at Penn State and Professor of Psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine. He also serves as a regional medical director for Pennsylvania’s Child Psychiatry Access Program where he leads efforts to support primary care providers in behavioral health management.

Learning Objectives:

Identify when nonpharmacological treatment will be critical to optimize functioning in youth with ADHD

Apply systematic strategies for assessing the impact of ADHD medication in order to maximize treatment benefits

Learn how to select between different ADHD medications to optimize the duration of therapeutic effects

Learn how to optimize the tolerability of CNS stimulants

Practice GAP:
Despite the wide range of available treatments, most youth with the disorder experience persistent impairment into adulthood. The ability to select the optimal package of treatments from the wide range of available options and adjusting these treatments over time to address the evolving impairments caused by ADHD over development can be quite challenging. These challenges contribute to the appreciable highly rates of poor uptake, premature treatment discontinuation and persistent impairment experienced by youth with ADHD.

Contact Information: For more information, contact Chelsea Wolff or Valerie Williams.
Email Chelsea Email Valerie