Dr. Posner’s work has been noted in a keynote speech at the White House, cited in Congressional hearings, and she gave the lead presentation in a U.S. Senate forum on school safety after Parkland. Through her advocacy, she has changed local, national and international policy, which in turn has helped achieve reductions in suicide across all sectors of society. Israeli government officials said her work “is not only saving millions of lives but in Israel it is literally changing the way we live our lives.”
She gave the invited presentation on tackling depression and suicide at the first European Union high level conference on mental health, was recognized as the Most Distinguished Alumna of her graduate school at Yeshiva University in the past 50 years, and received the New York State Suicide Prevention Award. She was named one of New York Magazine’s “Most Influential” and received the Angel Award of New York’s “100 Socially Responsible.”
The Columbia Protocol has been adopted or recommended by the CDC, FDA, DoD, and NIMH. Dr. Posner was commissioned by the FDA to develop a scientific approach that has become the gold standard for suicide monitoring and is ubiquitous across the U.S and many international agencies. The FDA has characterized her work as “setting a standard in the field” and a lead article in The New York Times called it “one of the most profound changes of the past sixteen years to regulations governing drug development.” Dr. Posner’s scholarly work has been included in the compendium of the most important research in the history of the study of suicide.
Dr. Posner was recently awarded The Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for her work saving lives across the nation.