Division of General Internal
Medicine

Mack Lipkin, MD; Professor of Medicine; Director, Section of Primary Care; Co-Director, Primary Care Residency Training Program

Phone: 212-263-6598
Fax: 212-263-8234
E-mail: mack.lipkin@med.nyu.edu

Information Page

Mack Lipkin, Jr., M.D. is Professor of Medicine and Chief of Primary Care Internal Medicine at NYU School of Medicine, Founding President of the American Academy on Communication in Health (AACH), and a Past President of the Society of General Internal Medicine. He directs the Residency Education Program in Primary Care Internal Medicine, and directs the Physician, Patient, and Society course. He is President of the Zlinkoff Fund for Medical Education and Research.

He graduated (magna, phi beta kappa) from Harvard’s College and Medical School. After Residency at UNC and USPHS Fellowship in Medicine and Psychiatry with George Engel, he joined faculty at the U. of Rochester where he was Coordinator for Psychosocial Aspects of Primary Care and developed the first fellowship program on psychosocial aspects of primary care and the first psychosocial, intensive, block curriculum. He developed a unique model integrating mental health into primary care mental health services at an HMO he helped start, ran an award winning free clinic, Threshold, and a post-residency fellowship program in psychosocial aspects of primary care, and researched genetic counseling as a model of patient doctor educational interactions. In 1979 Dr. Lipkin became Visiting Research Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation with Kerr White to organize the new Health of Populations program (now INCLEN) that developed centers for clinical epidemiology and the training of young faculty to champion clinical epidemiology in developing countries; He went on to carry on his own research and edit five books.

Dr. Lipkin has taught courses in throughout Europe, was Interchange Professor of Medicine in the Netherlands for six years, and has spoken and taught at major medical institutions all over the world on general medicine and primary care, psychosocial issues in primary care, on research methods, the medical interview and doctor-patient relationship, and medical education.  He has produced twelve books and over 160 articles and chapters.

Recognized as a world leader concerning the medical interview and related skills, he is Founding President and Chairman of the American Academy on Physician and Patient.  In this area he created a faculty development program, created the widely used and adapted and studied Lipkin model of psychosocial education, worked on the integration of psychosocial skills in practice, did collaborative research in this area, and created a model curriculum.  His work received the Rosenthal Award of the American College of Physicians for "significant clinical innovation". 

He is senior editor of the book, The Medical Interview;  wrote the first psychosocial syllabus for the general internal medicine chapter for MKSAP VIII; and edited a seven volume book series, FRONTIERS OF PRIMARY MEDICINE.   He is senior editor of "Improving your core clinical skill: the medical interview," a multi-media instructional teaching unit for all levels of medical interview teaching-- acquired by over 100 institutions.  He was a member of the Board of the New York Foundation for seven years.  He served on the Governor's Medical Advisory Panel on Primary Care as Chair of the Committee on Medical Education and on the New York Council on Graduate Medical Education.

Dr. Lipkin was Principal Investigator of the Macy Initiative in Health Communication, a three-school four-year study of education in humanism, medical interviewing, and related issues. He was PI of NYU’s award winning development of a first responders’ training program, Psychosocial Aspects of Bio-terrorism and Disaster Preparedness. The Lipkin Model, which he developed, uses simultaneous teaching of knowledge, skills, and attitudes in intensive workshop formats that have been demonstrated to change knowledge, skills, attitudes, and enduring behavioral patterns of students, residents, and practitioners. The model has been adopted for teaching of the doctor patient relationship, the medical interview, pain, alcoholism, cancer care, end of life care, teaching, and personal awareness of physicians.

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