Robinowitz Honored as Long-Time Leader and Mentor in AMA House

Carolyn Robinowitz, M.D., a long-time AMA member and immediate past chair of the AMA Section Council on Psychiatry, was honored with a special reception at this year’s Interim Meeting of the AMA House of Delegates at National Harbor outside of Washington, D.C.

Robinowitz is a former APA president, APA senior deputy medical director, and director of APA’s Division of Education. She is also a former dean of the Georgetown University School of Medicine and held leadership positions in many psychiatric organizations. She has been a member of the AMA House of Delegates since 1975, when there were no more than a dozen women in the House, and has held numerous AMA leadership positions, including chair of the AMA’s Council on Science and Public Health.

AMA leaders, including AMA President-elect Patrice Harris, M.D., APA leaders, and other members of the psychiatric delegation, hailed her tireless energy and dedication to advancing the interests of psychiatry within the AMA and her mentoring of many psychiatrists who have risen to positions of leadership in the AMA.

“Carolyn has been a role model and an example of leadership in organized medicine for all of us,” said Harris.

Over the years, Robinowitz has witnessed and helped to shape the evolution of the AMA House into a far more diverse body with a renewed focus on public health concerns, medical education, and physician performance and satisfaction. “This is definitely not your grandfather’s or even father’s organization,” Robinowitz said.

At the reception and in comments to Psychiatric News after the meeting, Robinowitz spoke of the enormous success of the AMA Section Council on Psychiatry and the larger psychiatric delegation within the AMA.

“I am proud of the successes of psychiatry in the AMA and the House of Medicine,” she said. “Our results have been the culmination of more than a decade of work beginning with a strategic planning process initiated by [past APA President and former section council member] Joe English, M.D., who held us to maintaining a focus on goals and priorities.”

The AMA Section Council on Psychiatry is composed of delegates from APA, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, and the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry. Additionally, there are psychiatrist members of most state delegations to the AMA House.

Psychiatrists currently occupy seats and leadership positions on virtually all of the AMA councils. For instance, psychiatrist Jim Sabin, M.D., is chair of the influential Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, and psychiatrist Al Herzog, M.D., is chair of the AMA Council on Long-Range Planning and Development. Within the last decade, two psychiatrists have been elected president of the AMA—Jeremy Lazarus, M.D., who was president in 2012-2013, and Harris, whose presidential year will commence next June.

“Not only have psychiatrists been elected to major leadership positions, but our delegation and more importantly our issues—especially parity for mental illness and substance use disorders—have been endorsed and promoted by colleagues throughout the House,” Robinowitz said. “We have worked to educate colleagues and to strengthen alliances for the benefit of our profession and the patients whom we serve.

“It takes considerable time to build trust and respect at the AMA,” Robinowitz said. “I am so proud that our delegation and the Section Council on Psychiatry have been recognized as an important, trustworthy, and reliable participant.”

Current section council chair Jerry Halverson, M.D., echoed those comments. “The AMA House of Delegates is a great model of how psychiatrists can work with other physicians to push common-sense policies that will help improve the lives of our patients and our practices,” he said. “This works at the national level and the state and local levels. One of the most effective ways for a psychiatrist to engage in this type of advocacy is to work with our other colleagues at the national level and the state and local levels by engaging in our state and county medical societies along with our state psychiatric organizations.”

After many years practicing psychiatry in the Washington, D.C., area, Robinowitz and her husband, Max Robinowitz, M.D., a pathologist, recently moved to San Francisco to be near children and grandchildren. ■