Dr. David C. Steffens, an internationally prominent academician, clinician and researcher with expertise in geriatric psychiatry, has been appointed professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center, effective July 1.
He joins UConn after more than 20 years at Duke University School of Medicine, where he served as a professor of psychiatry, vice chair for education and head of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Steffens is the president-elect of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, has authored more than 240 peer-reviewed papers and is the co-editor of the leading textbook in geriatric psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Geriatric Psychiatry.
“Along with working at the cutting edge of late life depression and cognitive disorders research and clinical care, Dr. Steffens also has considerable experience in medical education and mentoring aspiring physicians and junior faculty. We are excited to have him join the UConn Health Center in this leadership position,” said Dr. Bruce T. Liang, interim dean of the UConn School of Medicine and director of the Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center.
“Dr. Steffens is one of several high-achieving leaders in academic medicine who have chosen to join the UConn Health Center in recent months. We are confident that the enactment of Governor Malloy’s Bioscience Connecticut plan and the collaboration with Jackson Laboratory that was approved by the General Assembly last fall, played a significant role in these recruitments,” added Philip Austin, interim vice president for health affairs. “We are very pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Steffens to the Health Center community.”
Last month, University President Susan Herbst announced that Dr. Frank Torti, an accomplished cancer researcher from Wake Forest University and former official with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), will become the new vice president for health affairs. In late 2011, Dr. David McFadden was named chairman of the Department of Surgery and Dr. Paul Skolnik joined UConn as the chairman of the Department of Medicine.
“I’m very enthusiastic about joining the UConn Health Center community as it moves forward with innovative approaches to providing health care, advancing research and educating the next generation of clinicians,” Steffens said. “This is a particularly exciting time for the field of psychiatry and psychology, with new advances in understanding mental illness that will lead to better outcomes for our patients and their families.”
UConn’s Department of Psychiatry provides clinical care across a range of inpatient and outpatient services. It features a world-renowned Alcohol Research Center, and includes specialty services in psychopharmacology, mood disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, child psychiatry, Huntington’s disease and psychological assessment. In addition, the Department of Psychiatry supports a robust and collaborative array of educational programs for physicians and physicians-in-training, including graduate medical education, undergraduate medical education and continuing medical education.
A graduate of Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center School of Medicine, Steffens moved to Duke University Medical Center in 1988, where he completed his internship and residency in psychiatry. His career has focused on mood and cognitive disorders in older adults since joining the faculty at Duke. Steffens received a Master’s of Health Science in Clinical Research from Duke in 2000. He currently holds a National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH)-supported Mid-Career Development Award.
Steffens was the founding chair of the NIH Adult Psychopathology and Disorders of Aging study section and has a substantial record of mentoring clinical research trainees on NIH-funded awards. He has served as both a clinical fellowship director in geriatric psychiatry and a NIMH-funded research training fellowship director. His clinical research interests include the neurobiology of late life depression, epidemiology of mood and cognitive disorders in the elderly, and studies focusing on mood and cognitive outcomes of depression in the elderly.
Steffens’ major research project, known as Neurocognitive Outcomes of Depression in the Elderly (NCODE), now in its 16th year, was recently awarded another five years of support from NIMH. The NCODE study focuses on clinical, cognitive and neuroimaging assessments of older adults with and without depression. It also includes post-mortem analyses of neuroanatomical changes in aging brains of depressed and control participants. At UConn, Steffens will continue his research pursuits and will see patients with mood disorders.
Steffens’ appointment follows a national search led by Dr. George Kuchel, Citicorp Chair in Geriatrics and Gerontology and director of the UConn Center on Aging. Steffens succeeds Dr. Victor Hesselbrock, interim chair and director of the UConn Alcohol Research Center.
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