Roberto Lewis-Fernández, MD

Dr. Lewis-Fernández is a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, director of the New York State Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence and the Hispanic Treatment Program, and co-director of the Anxiety Disorders Clinic, at New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is also lecturer on social medicine at Harvard University. Dr. Lewis-Fernández’s research focuses on developing clinical interventions and novel service-delivery approaches to help overcome disparities in the care of underserved US cultural groups. His work centers on improving treatment, engagement, and retention in mental health and physical health care by persons with anxiety, depression, and other serious mental illnesses. He also studies the way in which culture affects individuals’ experience of mental disorder and their help-seeking expectations, including how to explore this cultural variation during the psychiatric evaluation. The National Institutes of Mental Health, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the American Red Cross, and private foundations, including the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, have funded his work.  Dr. Lewis-Fernández is president of the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry, chair of the Cultural Psychiatry Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, and immediate past president of the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture. He chairs the Internalizing Disorders Review Committee of the DSM and the Cultural Issues Review Committee of DSM-5-TR, and co-chairs the Working Group on Culture-Related Features of ICD-11.