NANCY RAPPAPORT, MD

Dr. Nancy Rappaport is a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist and is a part-time associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  Her research, teaching, and clinical expertise focus on the collaboration between education and psychiatry.  Working as a science teacher at an innovative elementary school in Harlem, NY where she advocated for support for struggling families was a life-altering experience and inspired her to enter medical school.  Dr. Rappaport received the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Sidney Berman Award for the School-Based Study and Treatment of Learning Disorders and Mental Illness in 2012.  She also received Cambridge Health Alliance’s Art of Healing Award in 2013 – an award given to one who “transcends boundaries, joyfully embraces humanity, and profoundly inspires the healing of body and spirit.”  Rappaport is the author of The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students, written with behavioral analyst Jessica Minahan.  One reviewer notes that “The Behavior Code gives teachers the tools to transform the behavior patterns of some of their most challenging students.  By using this essential book, teachers – instead of punishing or ‘writing off’ troubled students – can get them onto a path for success.”  Rappaport is also the author of the memoir In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother’s Suicide, winner of the Boston Authors Club’s 2010 Julia Ward Howe Prize.