The UNC System’s Board of Governors honored Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, one of the top researchers of perinatal depression and mood disorders, with a distinguished award on Thursday.

Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody. (Photo via the UNC School of Medicine.)

The board formally awarded Meltzer-Brody this year’s O. Max Gardner Award at its meeting, celebrating the psychiatrist’s international achievements in researching depression of women during pregnancy and after childbirth. The award, granted by the board each year, is given to a faculty member of the UNC System who “has made the greatest contribution to the welfare of the human race” during the academic year.

While Meltzer-Brody had been announced as the winner earlier in the year, she attended Thursday’s meeting virtually and spoke about receiving the honor, saying she is deeply grateful. She praised the UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC Health community for its role in helping pursue such research, thanking the many colleagues she’s worked with over her two decades at the university.

“My work has been done in collaboration with really outstanding colleagues,” said Meltzer-Brody, “who best can be described as deeply thoughtful and inspiring people that share a love of science, medicine and making a meaningful difference in the lives of those we serve. Really, there’s noting better than to have the opportunity to come to work each day with people who are passionate, committed and want to make the world a better place.”

Meltzer-Brody also thanked her family for their support, saying her parents, her husband and her children’s love as she worked to find solution to help others is “critical.”

“Thank you for your patience and understanding for the time I’ve invested in my passion, that of trying to make a dent in those that suffer from emotional distress or mental illness — both in women and their families during the perinatal period, and then certainly in my interest in physician mental health.”

The O. Max Gardner Award has been given annually since 1949 and is the only award for which any faculty member in all 17 UNC System schools can be eligible. Named after the former governor whose leadership helped combine North Carolina’s public universities, the award carries a $20,000 stipend. The last UNC-Chapel Hill faculty member to earn the honor was molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner Aziz Sancar in 2016.

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