Harold Alan Pincus, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry and Healthcare Management and Policy and co-director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Pincus also serves as a senior scientist at the RAND Corporation. 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.
He is the national director of the Health and Aging Policy Fellowship (supported by the John A. Hartford Foundation, West Health Policy Institute and Atlantic Philanthropies) and previously 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, was the special assistant to the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and served on White House and congressional staffs as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar.
Dr. Pincus has been appointed to the editorial boards of 12 scientific journals and published more than 500 scientific publications in health services research, science policy, research career development, quality of care and the diagnosis, classification and treatment of mental disorders. He has led research and research training programs totaling over $250 Million in external funding. Among multiple other national/international committee appointments, he is co-chair of the National Quality Forum Standing Committee on Behavioral Health and the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 Committee on Quality and Patient Safety and was vice chair of the Task Force on DSM-IV.
Dr. Pincus was named 2019 Mentor of the Year at the Columbia University Medical Center and the 2017 recipient of the C. Charles Burlingame Award by the Institute of Living for contributions to the field of psychiatry and has received the William C. Menninger Memorial Award of the American College of Physicians for distinguished contributions to the science of mental health, the Research Mentorship Award from the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatry and APA for contributions to the career development of young investigators, Vestermark Award from the National Institute of Mental Health and APA for contributions to psychiatric education, Health Services Research Senior Scholar Award of the APA and Columbia University’s Emily Mumford Medal among other honors.
For 22 years he worked one evening a week at a public mental health clinic caring for patients with severe mental illnesses.