“Harold is the leading national and international authority on the quality of mental healthcare,” said Harvey Karp, M.D. ’76, in his letter nominating Dr. Harold Alan Pincus for the Distinguished Alum Humanitarian/Service Award. As Dr. Karp noted: “Harold has steadfastly maintained the Einstein ethos of respect for and service to the individual.”
Dr. Pincus earned his M.D. degree at Einstein and completed his psychiatric residency at George Washington University Hospital, followed by a fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar. As a clinical scholar, he was a staff member of the President’s Commission on Mental Health in the Carter White House and then a congressional fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives. After his fellowship, he served as the special assistant to the director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Dr. Pincus is a tenured professor of psychiatry and healthcare management and policy and co-director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University. He is also the creator and national director of the Health and Aging Policy Fellowship. Previously, he was director of the RAND-University of Pittsburgh Health Institute and executive vice chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and directed national programs for the Robert Wood Johnson and MacArthur Foundations. Earlier, Dr. Pincus was deputy medical director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and founding director of APA’s office of research. In addition to serving on several national academies’ committees, he has been co-chair of the measure applications partnership coordinating committee established under the Affordable Care Act, vice chair of the task force on DSM-IV and Co-Chair of the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 Committee of Quality and Patient Safety. For 22 years he worked one evening a week at a public mental health clinic caring for patients with severe mental illnesses.
Dr. Pincus, why did you decide to study medicine?
Dr. Pincus: “In college, I majored in sociology because it allowed me to take a broad range of courses in psychology, religious thought, political science, etc. However, for most of my undergraduate experience, I did not have a clear notion of what I wanted to do after college. Toward the end of my junior year at Penn, I was sitting in an abnormal psychology class with a psychiatrist as a guest lecturer and thought, ‘That sounds interesting….becoming a psychiatrist, talking to people, understanding what’s going on in their minds.’ So that summer I went to Stanford to take organic chemistry and in the fall applied to medical school. However, as no one in my family was in medicine or even science, I had little idea of what medical school would be like.”
How did your experience at Einstein influence your career?
“At Einstein, I was exposed to a broad range of experiences and opportunities, and even thought about becoming a neonatologist—I was really good at doing spinal taps in infants! I ultimately chose psychiatry since it seemed to interface with multiple disciplines and across all medical specialties. Furthermore, my experience at Einstein, with the diverse clinical settings, patient populations and Bronx neighborhoods, made me aware of the challenges people from disadvantaged backgrounds face in obtaining quality medical care. Einstein also gave me the flexibility to take several electives in Washington, D.C., where my girlfriend (and ultimately wife) was in law school. I was very fortunate to spend six weeks in Senator Jacob Javits office working on health policy issues, and now I direct a national Health and Aging Policy Fellowship. A main theme of my research has been focused on how to better integrate psychiatry and mental health into general healthcare as well as measuring and improving the quality of behavioral healthcare and the quality of healthcare more generally.”
What is the professional accomplishment you are most proud of?
“Number one is my work with mentoring young people across the training spectrum, in psychiatry and beyond. For example, with this year’s cohort, we will have more than 200 alumni from my Health and Aging Policy Fellowship. Those I’ve mentored are sprinkled around the country now. And I have also written about the process of mentorship and on how institutions can provide and develop effective mentorship programs.”
What advice would you have given yourself in medical school? OR what advice would you give our current and future students at Einstein?
“Be open, be intellectually curious. Look for opportunities, even opportunities that are not necessarily completely logical, and get exposed to a lot of different things. I intensely avoided being highly specialized, and that gave me my career.”
Among Dr. Pincus’ many honors for contributions to his field are the Burlingame Award from the Institute of Living, the Menninger Memorial Award from the American College of Physicians, the Vestermark Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, and mentoring awards from the American Psychiatric Association and Columbia.
2024 Alumni Awardees