About Us
Welcome
Through a partnership with the Robert F. and Eleonora W. McCabe Foundation and local philanthropists, the University of Florida College of Medicine established the UF Center for Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine in Vero Beach, Florida. This teaching facility, staffed by UF clinicians and fellows, represents a new model in community medicine—academic medical centers partnering with philanthropy in local communities to identify and respond to urgent health-care needs.
In response to the great demand for additional mental health-care resources along the Treasure Coast, Ellie and Bob McCabe approached the University to help address this issue. Ultimately, the McCabe Foundation donated $2 million to the Department of Psychiatry to establish an endowment to support the Robert F. and Eleonora W. McCabe Clinical Eminent Scholar Chair in Psychiatry and Community Mental Health. Inspired by this vision, other local philanthropists and their families joined the effort by contributing an additional $2.3 million over the next four years to provide the immediate funding that has allowed the Center to open without delay.
At the core of the Founding Partners’ commitment is a deep awareness that services offered at the Center might have made all the difference in the lives of those who have already been lost. Their hope is that one day every person and family in need in Indian River County will be able to easily access mental health and addiction services through a well-organized, strong and stable continuum of care.
Education
The Center’s core mission is to attract and train the next generation of mental health-care professionals in Indian River County. To this end, the Center will provide fellowships in the areas of addiction medicine, child & adolescent psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. The Center also will be home to the first fellowship program in community mental health in the state of Florida.
In addition, the Center is able to provide critical Continuing Medical Education (CME) opportunities to all medical professionals. This will allow the excellent providers already in the area to remain current on the best practices in their specialties.
Community
Physicians tend to practice where they have trained. By providing fellowships, the Center will be able to increase the number of practitioners in the area, thereby increasing the resources available to patients and their families. Working with local health-care providers, the Center will continue to identify areas of need and work to fill the gaps in access to quality mental health-care. Community outreach efforts will also strive to educate the community on the need for early intervention.
Patient Care
The UF Center for Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine is a mental health-care environment that augments the services currently available in the area. It will bring all the resources and expertise of the University of Florida to bear for the citizens of Indian River County. Not limited by distance, doctors at the Center will be able to connect with their colleagues in Gainesville via videoconference to collaborate on complex cases. This will ensure that citizens of Indian River County have rapid access.
