Charles Caley is the second straight URI graduate to win the award presented to distinguished psychiatric pharmacy practitioners.
University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy alumnus Dr. Charles Caley has been selected to receive the 2023 Judith J. Saklad Memorial Award by the American Association of Psychiatric Pharmacists. It is the second straight year a URI alum has won the prestigious award after URI Professor Robert Defresne was honored last year.
Named after the late Judith J. Saklad, the award is presented annually to a senior psychiatric pharmacy practitioner who has achieved a level of professional distinction and represents the qualities and ideals of professional enthusiasm, a passion for optimizing patient care, and continuing dedication to the practice of psychiatric pharmacy. Caley, who is the chair of Pharmacy Practice and Clinical Professor at Western New England University, has primarily targeted three areas in his career — movement disorders associated with antidepressant treatment, metabolic effects of second-generation antipsychotics, and mental illness stigma in healthcare.
“There are so many individuals in the field deserving of this award, so just getting nominated and then ultimately selected is very humbling,” Caley said.
Caley received a Bachelor’s in pharmacy in 1986 from URI and went on to become a community pharmacist on Martha’s Vineyard. He returned to URI to complete his Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 1991, then completed a two-year specialty residency in psychiatric pharmacotherapy at the former Institute of Mental Health in Cranston, now Eleanor Slater Hospital.
“You can’t understate the value and importance of the opportunities afforded me at URI,” Caley said, noting the experiential education he received at the URI College of Pharmacy. “The access to residency training alone was valuable. But even before, while working on my bachelor’s degree, I spent three months in Alaska working with the Indian Health Service. URI was one of the schools that gave us that opportunity. It really helped set me on my career path.”
Caley has been board certified in psychiatric pharmacy since 1996. Much of his psychiatric pharmacy career was spent as a clinical faculty member at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy with the Institute of Living in Hartford as his practice site. For more than 20 years, he provided outpatient psychopharmacology consultations, was a treatment team member for the Schizophrenia Rehabilitation Program, precepted more than 350 PharmD students, taught in the IOL psychiatry residency training programs, directed a psychiatric pharmacy residency, and contributed to research and scholarship as a member of the Burlingame Center for Psychiatric Research and Education.
During his academic career he has been recognized for his experiential teaching, innovations of practice, and clinical psychopharmacology teaching. He is a consultant for the Institute of Living’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry residency training program and Post-Graduate Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Fellowship. As a department chair at WNE, he has been leading and supporting a group of talented faculty who are improving treatment outcomes of citizens in western Massachusetts.
Caley is a founding member of AAPP and a founding circle member of the AAPP Foundation. Since its inception he has served in several capacities including program committee chair, public and professional relations committee chair, at-large board member, President, and CPNP Foundation President – currently he is a member of the Employer Resource Center Task Force and a chapter author for the Psychiatric Pharmacotherapy Review Book. Beyond AAPP, he has also chaired the psychiatric pharmacy specialty council for the Board of Pharmacy Specialties and completed the Academic Leadership Fellows Program with the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.