ABOUT
Rebecca Palpant Shimkets
Rebecca Palpant Shimkets has a 20-year career in mental health focusing initially on the assessment and treatment of mental illnesses. The past decade and a half were spent directing a mental health journalism fellowship program for former U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Under her leadership, 165 journalists completed major media projects on mental health and the program was expanded into South Africa, Romania, Colombia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. She is established as an expert on media depictions of mental illnesses and anti-stigma reduction and public awareness efforts around mental health. She was appointed to two National Academies committees on the topic and spearheaded a special theme issue of the American Journal of Public Health that focused on the latest research to support mental health anti-stigma reduction interventions. She has served on numerous boards, advisory groups, and committees on both mental health and cancer survivorship.
Publications by Palpant Shimkets have appeared in JAMA, the CDC’s Preventing Chronic Disease, Everyday Health, USA Today, Global Health Magazine, and Psychiatric Services. She has ghost written multiple pieces for Former U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter and was a driving force behind the writing and editing of Within Our Reach (2010, Rodale).
Today, Palpant Shimkets applies her expertise to reducing the stigma around seeking mental health care with a special focus on cancer survivors. She also supports research and policy to ensure evidence-based mental health services are available. Palpant Shimkets speaks publicly about her two-time cancer survivorship experiences and is the daughter of two cancer survivors. Fourteen of her immediate family members have experienced cancer.
Married for the first time at age 40, Palpant Shimkets is building a life in northern Georgia with her husband Dr. Rick Shimkets and learning motherhood on the fly by raising two step-sons Darien and Logan and being an aunt and great aunt to 26 children. Her husband is a geneticist and CEO of a bio-technology company that does anti-body discovery – some of which is applied to cancer treatment research.