Dr. Richard Cull Christensen, MD

Richard C. Christensen, MD, MA, is Professor and Chief of the Division of Public Psychiatry at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He obtained an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Rutgers University, an MA in Philosophy (Medical Ethics) from Georgetown University and his MD from Wright State University where he was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Honor Medical Society. His long-standing clinical involvements as an academic community psychiatrist have been directed toward developing and providing psychiatric services to underserved populations through academic-public sector liaisons. His clinical commitments have included directing a clinic for homeless persons at a large urban shelter in Jacksonville, overseeing a psychiatric outreach initiative to those individuals living on the streets, serving as medical director for a SAMHSA-funded initiative targeting chronically homeless persons suffering the effects of co-occurring disorders, and developing an …integrated psychiatry-primary care initiative based at the UF and Shands Community Health and Family Medicine Clinic in Jacksonville. He has served as the former Director of the Community Psychiatry Program and medical student clerkship director at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville and has been actively involved in the teaching of medical students, residents and Fellows since 1990. In 1996 he was awarded the Hippocratic Award by the graduating class of medical students and has received numerous teaching awards for his work with resident physicians in both Family Medicine and Psychiatry. In 2005 he developed and was named Director of the University of Florida's Fellowship in Community Psychiatry. His current clinical obligations entail serving as the Director of Behavioral Health Services at the Sulzbacher Center, a large shelter and medical clinic for homeless persons in Jacksonville, Florida. He has published over eighty peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and reviews on topics related to community psychiatry, medical ethics, access to health care for the poor and underserved, medical education, and clinical psychiatry. He continues to present at both national and regional professional conferences on issues related to these topics.