Benjamin Rush Professorship in Psychiatry
The Benjamin Rush Professorship in Psychiatry was established in 2018.
Dr. Rush began his medical studies at age 15. In 1762, he was one of 10 attendees of William Shippen’s course in anatomical study, the first to be offered in this country. He received his medical degree in 1768 at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and returned to Philadelphia in 1769 as Professor of Chemistry at the College of Philadelphia, a precursor institution of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1789, he succeeded John Morgan, MD as Chairman of Theory and Practice of Medicine and, in 1791, was appointed Professor of the Institutes and Practice of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His work advanced the practice of medicine and modified the methods of diagnosing disease, in many cases originating new treatments. Dr. Rush was acclaimed for his bravery in addressing the yellow fever epidemic that attacked the citizens of Philadelphia in 1793. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, he was Treasurer of the National Mint, President of both the American Society for the Abolition of Slavery and the Philadelphia Medical Society, and a Founder of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Current Chairholder: Katharine Baratz Dalke, MD, MBE
Dr. Dalke is a graduate of Haverford College and the Perelman School of Medicine, from which she earned her MD and a Masters in Bioethics. She also completed her psychiatry residency training at the Perelman School of Medicine, where she had specific training in transgender health at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dr. Dalke’s clinical expertise is in mental health care for LGBTQIA+ populations, especially transgender and gender diverse people across the lifespan. She has worked in and developed integrated and multidisciplinary clinical programming focused on LGBTQIA+ health. In her role as Vice Chair for Clinical Operations in Psychiatry, she is scaling this experience to promote access to evidence-based, high-quality, and patient-centered mental health care across Penn Medicine.
Dr. Dalke’s scholarly work focuses primarily on the mental health of LGBTQIA+ populations, especially people born with intersex traits/variations of sex characteristics. She is particularly interested in the role that medical and social stigma play in the mental health outcomes of intersex populations, including psychological distress, psychiatric symptoms, and suicidality, with the aim of identifying strategies for developing medical and mental health care models that promote resilience and thriving.
Dr. Dalke served on the Consensus Committee for the reports, “Understanding the Well-being of LGBTQI+ Populations” and “Measuring Sex, Gender, and Sexual Orientation” at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dr. Dalke is a past member of the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office Working Group at the National Institutes of Health and the Intersex Committee in the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s standards of care revision process. A longstanding and visible advocate for people with intersex variations, Dr. Dalke has been recognized for her community work with appointment by Governor Josh Shapiro to serve as Chair of the Pennsylvania Commission on LGBTQ Affairs, as well as with several advocacy awards. She previously established the LGBTQ Clinic at the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute and co-founded the integrated Gender Health Clinic at the Penn State Health Hershey Children’s Hospital.
Previous Chairholder:
- Henry R. Kranzler, MD 2018-2023