Antonio Puente, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, has been elected 2017 president of the American Psychological Association. He will serve as APA's president-elect in 2016.
Puente is also the founder and co-director of the Cape Fear Clinic, a bilingual mental health clinic for the poor and uninsured, and holds appointments as a visiting professor at the Universidad de Granada, Spain, University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
One of Puente's priorities as president will be to continue the focus on integrating psychology into comprehensive health care.
"Psychology is the only viable discipline in position to provide an integrative care model wherein all health-care disciplines collaborate to produce better outcomes at lower costs," says Puente. "The initial step is to erase the divide between physical and mental health, all the while buttressing our efforts in mental health. Psychology will be the catalyst for integrative health care."
Puente is a past-president of the North Carolina Psychological Association, North Carolina Psychological Foundation, National Academy of Neuropsychology, Society for Clinical Neuropsychology and Hispanic Neuropsychological Society.
He is the author of eight books, 74 book chapters and 97 journal articles (English, Spanish and Russian) and approximately 400 presentations. He founded and for 10 years edited the quarterly scientific journal Neuropsychology Review, as well as a book series in clinical neuropsychology (33 books).
A member of APA since 1979, Puente has served two terms as the APA Council representative for the Society for Clinical Neuropsychology. He has chaired the Psychology Academy of the National Academies of Practice and several APA boards and committees ranging from the Board of Convention Affairs to the Committee for Psychological Tests and Assessments. He currently serves on the Joint Committee for Standards for Educational and Psychological Tests. Puente was APA's representative to the American Medical Association's Current Procedural Terminology panel from 1993 to 2008 and has served on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid's Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee.
Puente was born in Havana, Cuba, and received his bachelor's in psychology from the University of Florida and his PhD from the University of Georgia.
— Jim Sliwa