Associate Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Psychiatry

Director, Mental Health Equity Research, Institute for Health Equity Research (IHER)

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Dr. Sidney Hankerson is Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research promotes mental health equity by partnering with churches, youth sports leagues, and other trusted community based organizations. He is currently implementing an evidence-based suicide prevention program for Black and Latino youth in churches, YMCA basketball leagues, and Boys & Girls Clubs.

He is a member of the National Football League’s (NFL) Behavioral Wellness Committee and is a Second Opinion Physician for the National Basketball Association (NBA). He was recently awarded the 2024 Presidential Lifetime Achievement Service Award bearing the signature of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the 46th President of the United States. He also received the American Psychiatric Association’s Distinguished Service Award for significant contributions to the field of Psychiatry in the United States.

Dr. Hankerson has been a Keynote or Featured Speaker at the White House Black Youth Suicide Prevention Summit, United Nations, National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and Aspen Ideas Festival, among others. He has presented at Fortune 500 corporations including Wells Fargo, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and CVS Health. Dr. Hankerson has been featured on several TV series: the PBS Documentary Mysteries of Mental Illness; a Pix11 News Special focused on mental health in the Black community; and a CBS segment about Mount Sinai’s  partnerships with community-based organizations and professional sports teams.

A native of Fredericksburg, Virginia, Dr. Hankerson completed a dual MD/MBA program from Emory University, where he was Medical School Class President. He completed his psychiatry residency at Emory and was appointed Chief Resident of Psychiatry at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He then completed a NIMH-funded research fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center and was on faculty at Columbia for 13 years before transitioning to his current leadership roles at Mount Sinai.