By Nicholas Roznovsky
The University of California, San Francisco has named longtime Department of Psychiatry faculty member Kim P. Norman, MD, as the inaugural UCSF Distinguished Professor for Adolescent and Young Adult Health. The professorship, made possible through the support of UCSF donors, including Marc and Lynne Benioff and others, will support research, teaching, and service activities related to advancing the understanding and care of transitional-aged youth in the area of psychiatry.
Norman joined the UCSF faculty in 1981 and has served as an attending physician at UCSF’s Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital (LPPH) for more than 35 years. He has focused much of his practice on developing innovative clinical programs for adolescents and young adults.
In 2004, Norman founded the UCSF Young Adult and Family Clinic (YAFC) as one of the nation’s first academically based psychiatry programs dedicated to extending care to transitional-aged youth, young adults, and their families. Over the past 14 years, YAFC has established itself as a leading clinical program in the Department of Psychiatry and UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences by providing exceptional clinical experiences and innovation in the creation of mental health services, clinical research, health education, outreach, and public policy advocacy.
“I am so glad that Kim has been recognized with this honor,” said Oberndorf Family Distinguished Professor in Psychiatry and department chair Matthew W. State, MD, PhD. “His work has truly transformed how clinicians offer treatment and support to adolescents and their families, and YAFC has become a critical part of our efforts to destigmatize mental illness and address the mental health needs of young adults in our community.”
Norman holds an MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his residency in psychiatry at UCSF. He founded LPPH’s first Eating Disorders Clinic in 1982 and served as its director for 22 years, and initiated a number of other clinical programs at the hospital, including the Adult Continuing Care Clinic, Adolescent Assessment Clinic, Dialectic Behavior Therapy Program, Intensive Family Therapy Program, Bridge Clinic crisis intervention program, YAFC’s Telemedicine Program, and the Next Mission Project for active-duty and veteran military service members.
He is a previous recipient of the Henry J. Kaiser Award for Excellence in Clinical Teaching and the Association of American Medical Colleges Award for Humanism in Medicine, as well as the Walden House Foundation’s Man of Substance Award. Norman has delivered numerous presentations around the nation and the world, including an address at the 2010 International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions World Congress Symposium in Beijing.
About UCSF Psychiatry
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry, UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital, and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry conducts its clinical, educational and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including UCSF campuses at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay and Laurel Heights, UCSF Medical Center, UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and UCSF Fresno.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise.
It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises three top-ranked hospitals – UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland – as well as Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital, UCSF Benioff Children’s Physicians, and the UCSF Faculty Practice. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF faculty also provide all physician care at the public Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. The UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program is a major branch of the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine.
