Ralph I. Horwitz, M.D., received his medical degree from Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, trained in internal medicine at McGill University and the Massachusetts General Hospital, and was a research fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale.
He is internationally known for his pioneering research that helped to establish the field of clinical investigation and outcomes research; for his distinguished leadership in reinvigorating the Department of Medicine at Yale; for his innovative programs in the education of physicians and the training of physician scientists; and his visionary renewal of the social contract linking the practice of medicine to the civic responsibility of the profession of medicine.
Under his leadership, research funding in Yale's department of medicine more than doubled from $25 million to nearly $60 million, and the department ranked first among Yale's departments in research productivity. In his professional research, Horwitz has made numerous contributions to the fundamental methods of clinical investigation and in the application of those methods to studies of the risk for disease and recovery from illness.
Horwitz and his colleagues conducted landmark studies investigating the relationship of estrogen to the risk of breast and uterine cancer, aspirin to the risk of Reye's Syndrome in children and, most recently, the effects of phenylpropanolamine found in over-the-counter diet pills and cough and cold products on the risk of brain hemorrhage in young adults. His clinical trial research has disproved claims that postmenopausal hormone therapy reduces the risk for stroke and other vascular disease.
Horwitz joined the faculty at Yale in 1978 and has served as co-director of the Yale Clinical Scholars Program for 25 years. In this role, he has helped to train a generation of leaders in patient-oriented research and health policy in medicine, pediatrics, surgery, and psychiatry. As chairman of medicine, he led the department's transition into a new laboratory research building, created a world class program of clinical research, established the nation's first Ph.D. program in a clinical department for physicians devoted to careers in biomedical science, and expanded the department's clinical programs locally and internationally. He is a fellow of both the American College of Physicians and the American College of Epidemiology.
Horwitz's selection as dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at Case Western Reserve University, as well as director of the Case Research Institute, was announced on January 17, 2003, and he began serving in these roles full time on April 1, 2003.
He is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Association of American Physicians (AAP). He recently completed a term as president of the American Board of Internal Medicine and member of the Council of the AAP.
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