Oberstar, Joel

Dr. Joel Oberstar

Dr. Joel Oberstar is our P3 Conference keynote speaker and will present on the topic, “The Intersection of Mental Health and Academic Instruction: A Medical Perspective on Optimizing Programming and Physical Space to Maximize Success for Complex Learners.” In this discussion, he will explore the biological, psychological and social factors underlying mental health. 

 

Two decades of training and clinical experience shape Dr. Oberstar’s perspectives, in particular his fellowship training in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School and leadership roles at PrairieCare and PrairieCare Medical Group, where he most recently served as Executive Vice President. 

 

He sees psychiatric care as the combination of many therapeutic approaches — individual and family therapy, medication, consideration of a person’s living environment and medical comorbidities and more. It’s an integrated approach focused on the whole person, taking children and adolescents as they are rather than how a clinician or educator might wish them to be. He also sees facility design as playing an important role in psychiatric care and advocates for improving the clinical or educational environment to improve outcomes for children and adolescents.

 

Dr. Oberstar has served on committees at the Minnesota Medical Association and the Minnesota Hospital Association and is a past president of the Minnesota Psychiatric Society and the Minnesota Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.