James A. Mays is a true renaissance man: poet, scholar, popular novelist, songwriter, cardiologist, and civil leader. His individual achievements are such that he was the recipient of the George Washington Medal. Other notable recipients of this prestigious award are Barbara Jordan and the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Mays has written several songs, one of which, Happy Birthday Mama, was recorded by Bill Cosby. He also co-wrote several songs with H.B Barnum. As an author he is responsible for nine novels, including his latest Trapped, which is in preparation to become a movie. An earlier trilogy, Strivers, is being developed as a miniseries. Dr. Mays is widely recognized as the founder of community problem-solving programs such as the Adopt-A-Family endowment. He is currently involved in several campaigns promoting drug and AIDS awareness and giving assistance to the homeless. He has frequently appeared on television, featuring on shows including The Today Show, The Phil Donahue Show, on radio, such as the Voice of America and has had articles published in LIFE, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and Ebony. Dr. Mays, who was decorated as combat physician in Vietnam, is a lone parent with four sons.

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

All across the United States, individuals, families, communities, and health care systems are struggling to cope with substance use, misuse, and substance use disorders. Substance misuse and substance use disorders have devastating effects, disrupt the future plans of too many young people, and all too often, end lives prematurely and tragically. Substance misuse is a major public health challenge and a priority for our nation to address. The effects of substance use are cumulative and costly for our society, placing burdens on workplaces, the health care system, families, states, and communities. The Report discusses opportunities to bring substance use disorder treatment and mainstream health care systems into alignment so that they can address a person's overall health, rather than a substance misuse or a physical health condition alone or in isolation. It also provides suggestions and recommendations for action that everyone-individuals, families, community leaders, law enforcement, health care professionals, policymakers, and researchers-can take to prevent substance misuse and reduce its consequences.

James A. Mays, MD, deserves the recognition a CNN Hero, because he is a unique medical doctor and person in providing medical of the body while giving hope as a role and motivator to the citizens of Los Angeles, especially its youth. He is called the Dr. Welby of the ghetto. He has been named the Doctor of the year in Los Angeles and Watts. He is a 1965 graduate of the University of Arkansas and was named Alumnus of the Year, Community Affairs, in 1993. His community education on high blood pressure resulted in an editorial written by him in the Los Angeles Times titled Salt and Soul Food revolutionized thinking on ethnic foods transfer as a etiology for heart disease, high blood pressure, and obesity; he awakened the nation during his national medical speaking engagements and appearance in the national media, picture, and print. He traveled the nation, speaking, while serving as the chief of cardiology as a young thirty-one-year-old physician at the new Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles from 19721976. His nocturnal AIDS education walks and education to street corners and motels, educating prostitutes, street people, and youth (1980 to present)are noteworthy. He cofounded the United High Blood Pressure Foundation and presented the first of a series of telethons. He later became chancellor of the Technical Health Career schools (19801985) while in private practice as a primary care physician with three medical offices in South Los Angeles for thirty-five years to the present.