Janina R. Galler, M.D. ‘72
The Lifetime Service Award
Janina Galler, M.D., is professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a senior researcher in the division of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston, where she studies the effects of childhood malnutrition on the brain and behavioral development over the life span and across generations. Her work in this area started when she was a first-year Einstein student, under the mentorship of Herbert G. Birch, Ph.D., M.D. Dr. Galler is recognized as a world leader in child nutrition and mental health. She is the co-founder and director of the 50-year Barbados Nutrition Study, whose findings have helped shape public policy for underserved children worldwide. Dr. Galler’s research program is interdisciplinary and involves both human and translational studies using animal models of malnutrition. Her research has shown a striking, lifelong increase in attentional deficits following childhood malnutrition, which are also present in the next generation even in the absence of direct exposure to malnutrition. She has served as member and policy committee chair of the National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She was the first recipient of the Joseph P. Kennedy Public Policy Leadership Award and served as a U.S. Senate Fellow. Dr. Galler received the American Psychiatric Association’s Blanche F. Ittleson Research Award for Outstanding Research Accomplishment in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Sophie H. Newcomb College Centennial Award, the Irving B. Harris Lectureship Award from the Society for Behavioral Pediatrics, and the Leon Eisenberg Award in Global Child Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities, and Research Ethics from Harvard Medical School. She is the author of over 200 published papers and two books and her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for over 35 years. Dr. Galler graduated summa cum laude from Sophie Newcomb College of Tulane University; after receiving her M.D. at Einstein, she completed a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been a member of the Einstein Alumni Association’s Board of Governors since 2011, and she served as president of the board for two consecutive terms, from 2015 to 2019. She is married to her former classmate, Burton D. Rabinowitz, M.D. ’72, and they have three daughters and one granddaughter.