Psychologist Thomas Coates, PhD, will never forget the first time he met Ellen Stover, PhD, then chief of the small grants program at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
It was 1982, and Coates and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, were convinced that more research was needed to understand the biobehavioral aspects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Cautiously optimistic, they flew to Maryland on their own dime to plead their case to Stover.
"Other institutes within the NIH were already doing amazing things in HIV research, but the NIMH hadn't really gotten involved," says Coates, now a distinguished professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We explained that there were substantial mental health and behavioral issues that are uniquely handled by the NIMH and Ellen understood immediately. It was one of those magical meetings. From that point on, she began advocating within the organization, and she was a master at marshaling resources within the framework of government."
Stover died on March 16 after a nine-month battle with an inoperable brain tumor. During APA's 2014 Annual Convention in Washington, D.C., she was honored posthumously and given an APA presidential citation at a ceremony hosted by the APA Committee on Psychology and AIDS and the Office on AIDS.
During her 35-year career, Stover changed the course of HIV/AIDS research by garnering support for studies about the behavioral and psychological factors that contribute to HIV transmission. These studies would later lay the foundation for successful education, prevention and treatment programs for the disease.
In addition to her impact on HIV/AIDS research, Stover also influenced research on major mental illnesses, including schizophrenia. She was committed to translating basic findings into interventions for people with any type of mental illness, says Steven Hyman, MD, the former NIMH director who is now the director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
"She understood that there was lot of good basic cognitive science, but it was not necessarily being applied to people with serious mental illnesses," Hyman says.
Pioneering a new field of research
Stover began her distinguished career in 1976 at NIMH as a special assistant to the associate director for extramural programs. Her dedication later earned her two division director titles within the organization.
"Ellen Stover and [NIH psychologist] Willo Pequegnat were the driving force behind AIDS behavioral research starting in the mid-1980s," says David Martin, PhD, APA's senior director for the Office of AIDS. "Back then, it came as a revelation to many people that psychology would have anything to say about prevention, risk reduction or mental health issues related to HIV. Drs. Stover and Pequegnat understood this."
In the mid-1980s, Stover rallied support to establish and fund HIV/AIDS research centers focused on mental health at universities nationwide. There are now centers in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
Anke A. Ehrhardt, PhD, founding director of the research center at New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, lauded Stover's foresight in recognizing the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration. "She wanted experts from different disciplines to work together, including researchers in neurology, pediatrics, infectious diseases, psychiatry and the community affected by the disease … that type of collaboration was unique and a milestone in the study of HIV/AIDS at the time," Ehrhardt says.
One of Stover's greatest gifts was her ability to garner support in the face of skepticism and staunch opposition, says Hyman.
"Sometimes I would watch her and she literally looked like the pied piper among tough-minded, grizzled people who had worked for years in infectious diseases," he recalls. "Ellen had an uncanny and astonishing talent for bringing people together and recruiting amazingly influential figures to work on the problem. Something in her seriousness and good heart worked magic."
Stover also worked closely with APA's Office on AIDS to launch the Conference on Advancing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy in Metropolitan Washington in 2012 and HIV Community Day, a one-day conference and community involvement event, held in conjunction with the APA Annual Convention.
As it became clear that AIDS was a global epidemic, Stover turned her advocacy genius toward efforts to launch an international HIV/AIDS portfolio within NIMH. In the late 1990s, she traveled to South Africa with a group of psychologists from universities throughout the United States who were among the first to conduct behavioral HIV research in the country. Stover's international HIV/AIDS research footprint would eventually extend to China, India, the Middle East and Russia.
"She was instrumental in bringing AIDS research to South Africa," says Gail Wyatt, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at University of California, Los Angeles. "She knew we needed to teach people about the disease [and] about how to protect themselves."
Supporting new researchers
Stover's dedication to HIV/AIDS research attracted and influenced the support of early career investigators, which resulted in programs such as the APA Cyber Mentors Program funded by NIMH. It matches early career protégés with volunteer mentors who are leaders in HIV/AIDS research and have a track record of receiving NIH grants.
Throughout her career, Stover was also passionate about encouraging young researchers, says Stanford University psychologist Cheryl Gore-Felton, PhD, who was a postdoctoral fellow when she met Stover in 1998 when the two were discussants for an APA symposium on gender issues in HIV.
"We gave our talk, and then Ellen Stover stood up," says Gore-Felton, now a professor and dean in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford. "She said to the audience, ‘This is really the future. It is the young investigators who will move the field forward to help us fight HIV/AIDS."
Heather Stringer is a journalist in San Jose, California.
