Biography
Milton Wainberg is a Venezuelan, American and Brazilian researcher, clinician, and educator whose work has focused on bringing research to practice within public mental health systems of care and on training the next generation of mental health of clinicians and researchers. Dr. Wainberg is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is Co-Director of the Implementation Science and Outcomes Core of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University, Scientific Co-Director of the Global Mental Health Program at Columbia University, and Director of Medical Education, HIV Mental Health Training Project also at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Dr. Wainberg has led a research portfolio concentrating on the intersection of HIV and mental health (funded by NIMH, NIAAA, NIDA and CDC). This work – conducted among some of the most vulnerable populations (e.g., adults and adolescents with mental illness and substance use disorders, sexual minorities) in both the US and Latin America – has brought evidence-based HIV prevention interventions to mental health care systems. His research also addresses the burden of mental disorders in low- and middle-income countries as Principal Investigator of two NIH global mental health implementation science training grants, one focused in the US (T32 Post-Doctoral Fellowship) and the other in sub-Saharan Africa (D43 FIC/NIMH), and an NIMH funded sub-Saharan Africa hub that combines mental health implementation science capacity building in five countries (Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia), and a large population-based implementation study examining best strategies to bring comprehensive mental health care in three Provinces in Mozambique, a country with about 29 million inhabitants and 13 local psychiatrists. The goal of these innovative implementation science training and research programs is to decrease the global mental health treatment gap as well as the global mental health research gap.