| Ezra Susser, MD, Dr. PH is Head of the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public
Health of Columbia University, and Department Head, Epidemiology of Brain Disorders at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Much of his research has been on the epidemiology of brain disorders especially psychoses. He has studied the
interrelationships between homelessness and psychotic disorder; compared psychotic disorders in low and high income
countries; and related prenatal exposures to the risk of schizophrenia in adulthood. Some of his recent work is on the
intersection of brain disorders and infectious desease. In schizophrenia research, his team has established an association
between prenatal exposure to infection and later risk of schizophrenia. He is presently examining whether prenatal
infections play a role in other neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism. To facilitate this and other work, he has taken
a leading role in establishing "conception to death" cohorts that will allow investigation of brain health and disorder (and
other health domains) over the full life course.
Dr Susser has taken an active role in using epidemiology to better understand social inequalities of health. Starting from
his early work on homelessness, and later work on HIV, he focused on the health of inner city urban populations, and was
formerly director of the Center for Urban Epidemilogic Studies at the New York Academy of Medicine. Most recently, in the
aftermath of the World Tade Center attack, he took a leading role in researching and responding to its effect on the
mental health of the city's population.
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The focus on inequalities extends also to global inequalities in health. He has been a key participant
in some large scale efforts to introduce treatment and prevention for HIV/AIDS in Africa, especially in South Africa, for instance,
the MTCT Plus global program to treat mothers and children with HIV in resource-poor settings. He has advocated for the integration
of expertise on brain disorders and mental health into the global campaign against HIV.
Dr Susser has published on the development of epidemiology as a discipline: genetic epidemiology, psychiatric epidemiology,
the integration of infectious and "chronic" disease epidemiology, and epidemiology more generally. Some of his recent
writings call for the integration of public mental health into mainstream of public health both nationally and
internationally.
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