Roberto Lewis-Fernández, MD





CEMHD Advisory Committee
NYS Psychiatric Institute
(212) 543-6512

 Dr. Lewis-Fernández is a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and director of the New York State Center of Excellence for Cultural Competence and the Hispanic Treatment Program 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 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 elect of the World Association of Cultural Psychiatry, a member of the National Advisory Mental Health Council of the National Institute of Mental Health, and chair of the Cultural Psychiatry Committee of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. He was a member of the Anxiety Disorders Work Group and the Culture and Gender Study Group of the DSM-5.