Elizabeth Ford, MD

 

Dr. Elizabeth Ford is the Clinical Director for the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Associate Professor in the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry. She is the Chair and Co-Founder of the Justice-Involved Behavioral Health Workgroup. She specializes in the mental health care of, and advocacy for, individuals who are currently or formerly incarcerated, and in the education of multi-disciplinary providers about the complex interface between the behavioral health and criminal justice systems. Much of her 20-year career has been in direct care and leadership roles, including the Director of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital, Training Director for the NYU Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship, Chief of Psychiatry for NYC Health + Hospitals Correctional Health Services in the NYC jail system, including on Rikers Island, and Chief Medical Officer and psychiatric provider at the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services. Dr. Ford regularly publishes in peer-reviewed academic journals, chairs the American Psychiatric Association’s workgroup on the care of individuals in jails and prisons, teaches medical students and psychiatric residents at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, and wrote a critically acclaimed memoir in 2017 about working on Bellevue Hospital’s jail psychiatric service entitled Sometimes Amazing Things Happen: Heartbreak and Hope on the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward.

Dr. Ford received her B.A. Degree from Yale University, her M.D. degree from the University of Virginia, and completed her psychiatric residency and fellowship training at the New York University School of Medicine.