Francine Cournos, MD

Member Health Equity Core

Francine Cournos, MD is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry (in Epidemiology) at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and Co-Principal Investigator of the Northeast/Caribbean AIDS Education and Training Center. She has worked at the interface of HIV and mental illness since 1983. This includes publishing the first seroprevalence study to document the elevated rates of HIV infection in people with severe mental illness and working on numerous clinical practice guidelines and policies on HIV-related mental health issues, including for the New York State AIDS Institute, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Health Organization.

Since 2000, Dr. Cournos has participated in HIV-related mental health projects in Brazil, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania. She has published more than 180 articles and book chapters, the majority of which focus on mental health and HIV, and has given more than one thousand local, national, and international talks. She has held many past administrative positions, including Director of the Washington Heights Community Service, Interim Director and Deputy Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Chair of the New York State Board for Medicine. Her memoir, City of One, tells a story of childhood adversity.

Additional Links:
https://www.necaaetc.org/

Education and Training

MD, New York University School of Medicine
BS, City College of New York

You can read more about Dr. Cournos' research here.