David Rubinow, MD, Assad Meymandi Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychiatry, will step down from his position of Department Chair effective July 1, 2019.
David Rubinow, MD, Assad Meymandi Distinguished Professor and Chair of Psychiatry, will step down from his position of Department Chair effective 7/1/19.
Rubinow has served as Chair of the Department of Psychiatry since 2006. During his tenure, the Department has achieved national attention for teaching, clinical care, and research. Over the past decade, the Department has often been in the top 10 nationally in NIH funding and second only to the Department of Medicine in NIH funding among UNC clinical departments. In addition, the Psychiatry Residency program is rated in the top 25 nationally by Doximity. During Rubinow’s tenure, the Wakebrook campus (with 60 beds) was created and Department faculty expanded to almost 300 clinicians and investigators. Finally, under Rubinow’s leadership, the UNC School of Medicine has become an international leader in research of Women’s Mood Disorders and Postpartum Depression, with UNC hosting both the first peripartum inpatient unit and first NIH sponsored fellowship in women’s mood disorders in the country.
In addition to his role as Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Rubinow has also served as Founder and Director of the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders. Personally, Rubinow is an internationally recognized expert in the evaluation and treatment of women with mood disorders that occur during periods of hormonal change.
He has also served as the Director of the UNC Center for Health Innovation, a small resource center that promotes the development of patient-centered innovations designed to address the current challenges facing our nation’s health care delivery system related to cost efficiency, quality of care, innovative health care delivery, and alignment of incentives among industry participants. The Center was responsible for the creation of Carolina Advanced Health, the first such collaborative venture in the country between an insurance company and an academic medical center.
Rubinow came to UNC in 2005 after a long and distinguished 27-year career at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md. There he started as a staff psychiatrist in 1979 and advanced through a series of positions of increasing responsibility, culminating with his becoming the Clinical Director of NIMH in 1987 and the founding chief of the NIMH’s Behavioral Endocrinology Branch in 1996.
Over the course of his career, he has received numerous teaching and research awards, including the Gold Medal Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry; the Mood Disorders Research Award of the American College of Psychiatrists; and the William C. Menninger Memorial Award of the American College of Physicians; the NIH Distinguished Clinical Educator Award; and the NIMH Mentor of the Year. He also served as President of the two premier behavioral neuroscience research organizations, the Society of Biological Psychiatry and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. Rubinow is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
He has served on the editorial boards of six journals and has authored or co-authored more than 400 scientific publications.
A national search will commence for a new Chair for the Department of Psychiatry.