A clinician who works with young patients at Addenbrooke's Hospital has been awarded an MBE in the King's New Year's Honours List.
Dr Isobel Heyman, clinical co-lead on the pioneering Cambridge Children's Hospital project, has been recognised for her career as a consultant psychiatrist working with children and young people.
She joined the Cambridge Children's Hospital team last year, while continuing to work as a consultant and honorary professor at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and at the UCL Institute for Child Health.
Cambridge Children's is a collaboration between the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT), Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) and the University of Cambridge.
The project aims to develop a state-of-the art children's hospital delivering an 'innovative model of healthcare for children and young people'.
Dr Heyman - who is currently employed by CPFT and supports young patients with mental health needs at Addenbrooke's - said: "I am deeply appreciative of this honour.
"With the group-effort of skilled clinical teams, it is an enormous privilege to care for children and families experiencing the most difficult of times.
"The Cambridge Children’s Hospital project, working to fully integrate physical and mental health care for the first time, means more to me in many ways than anything I’ve done before.
"Pulling together the treatment of physical and mental health is something that I’ve have been passionate about for my whole career."
Cambridge Children's Hospital will be the first specialist children's hospital for the east of England, and will be unique in treating young people's physical and mental health together, alongside research into childhood disease, diagnosis and treatment.
CPFT’s interim medical director, Dr Cathy Walsh, said: "This is a fantastic and well-deserved honour for Isobel, but it also puts the vital work we are doing to design a fully integrated children’s hospital firmly in the spotlight.
"Treating a child’s mental health and physical health together will lead to far better outcomes, not just for patients but also their families."
Dr Heyman said none of the intiatives to put mental health research into clinical practice would have been possible without the collaboration of Tamsin Ford, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Cambridge - who also works on the children's hospital team - and Professor Roz Shafran from the Institute of Child Health.
In addition to her work at Addenbrooke's and Great Ormond Street, Dr Heyman's research, clinical practice, teaching, leadership and strategic advice has been recognised nationally and internationally.
In 2015 she received the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists 'Psychiatrist of the Year' award, her Psychological Medicine Team at GOSH was awarded CAMHS team of the year 2018, and her drop-in mental health project ‘The Lucy Booth’ won British Medical Journal ‘Mental Health Team of the Year’ award in 2021.
Dr Heyman added: "There is much more to be done to ensure all young people receive the mental health care they need - so it is important and gratifying for child mental health to be recognised in an award."
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