After a year-long search, Dr. Ralph Horwitz, dean and vice president for medical affairs of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has been named chairman of the department of medicine for the School of Medicine. He will assume the position Dec. 1, leading the School of Medicine’s largest department with approximately 150 faculty members in 14 divisions and programs.

Beginning March 2005, a search committee co-chaired by Dr. Harvey Cohen, chair of the department of pediatrics, and Dr. Gary Glazer, chair of the department of radiology, reviewed 125 potential candidates; eleven finalists were invited for two-day visits and interviews. In March 2006, Dr. Philip Pizzo, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine, was presented with a list of four unranked finalists.

“I carefully evaluated each of the finalists, discussed their candidacy with leaders around the country, visited the home programs of selected individuals and determined that Dr. Horwitz was the best person at this time for Stanford,” Pizzo said.

In a joint statement, Cohen and Glazer stated: “Dr. Horwitz is a highly articulate clinician and investigator with a keen grasp of academic issues. We were impressed with his superb leadership skills and his dedication to the discipline of internal medicine as a foundation of the medical school.”

“Stanford Medical School and Stanford Hospital have provided me with an enormous opportunity to strengthen an already great department by enhancing its nationally prominent programs of research, education and clinical care,” Horwitz said. “In expanding the faculty, we will have the chance to maintain our laboratory-based research programs while developing a greater emphasis on the disease-oriented and patient-oriented science that translates new discoveries into clinical benefits.”

Horwitz also expressed his excitement about Stanford Hospital’s commitment to creating and expanding its clinical programs.

“It is a strength of Stanford that the medical school and the hospital are so aligned in their common pursuit of clinical and academic leadership,” he said.

During his tenure as chairman, Horwitz hopes to “create a department of medicine that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.”

“Our department must work together on those common responsibilities that unite us as a faculty — educating our students, residents and fellows; creating interdisciplinary programs of research that make us leaders in the clinical and translational sciences; and celebrating the practice of medicine,” Horwitz said. “Stanford has many great physicians. I hope to attract and nurture the careers of more such individuals and to recognize their achievements and contributions to Stanford medicine.”

Prior to working at Case, Horwitz served as the co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and chair of the department of internal medicine at Yale. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science and was recently selected as an advisory committee member for the director of the National Institutes of Health. In 2005, Horwitz was recognized for his exemplary contributions to medical research and education when he was honored with the Society of General Internal Medicine’s Robert J. Glaser Research Award.

“It is great for Stanford to have recruited such a talented chair,” said Dr. Harry Greenberg, who has served as the interim co-chairman of the department of medicine along with Dr. Norm Rizk.

Pizzo is similarly pleased by the appointment of Dr. Horwitz.

“Dr. Horwitz is passionate about medical education, research and patient care and how leadership in each of these areas will help serve our communities locally and globally and better secure the public trust in the future of medicine,” Pizzo said. “He will focus his energies on the recruitment of physician-scientists and clinician-educators. He will work diligently to enhance the education and training environment for students, residents and fellows. And he will work collaboratively with his colleagues in the medical school, University and at Stanford Hospital and Clinics to help make Stanford medicine the best it can be for the 21st century.”