K.N. Roy Chengappa, MD, Named UPMC Grand Champion
Congratulations to K.N. Roy Chengappa, MD (Professor of Psychiatry), who has been named a 2024 UPMC Grand Champion. The Grand Champion Award recognizes an individual who has provided unparalleled leadership in cultivating better communities.
Dr. Chengappa is service line chief of Comprehensive Recovery Services at UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital (WPH), which provides comprehensive specialized services to adults with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and other psychotic illnesses, including bipolar with psychosis. In addition, he serves as Senior Medical Director of Clinical Innovations in Quality Improvement at WPH.
For more than 30 years, Dr. Chengappa has been involved in 45 funded grants supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, private foundations and the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Chengappa’s research, in collaboration with colleagues nationwide, contributed to the approval of several medications prescribed to individuals with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. He has investigated the use of nutraceuticals and herbal-botanical extracts as potential medicines to treat symptoms of mental illness that are impervious to standard of care medications, and received the Pitt Innovator Award for his work in herbal-botanical medication development by the University of Pittsburgh’s Innovation Institute. In addition, Dr. Chengappa has created educational and decision-making tools for healthcare professionals, patients and their caregivers, including the de-prescription of no-longer-needed medicines using a shared decision-making approach.
The Grand Champion Award was presented at the 16th annual Celebrating Champions event, co-hosted by UPMC Senior Services and UPMC Western Behavioral Health.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Chengappa!