Robert J. Ronis, MD, MPH, is the Douglas Danford Bond Professor and Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at University Hospitals Case Medical Center/Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is also co-director of the CEBP at Case Western Reserve.
Ronis is a graduate of the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where he completed his residency in psychiatry at University Hospitals. He was also a National Health Services Corps volunteer and the first full-time psychiatrist in southeastern Ohio before returning to Case Western Reserve to develop its community psychiatry program in 1990. He was director of residency training and vice chair of the department from 1996 to 2004 and interim chair of the department in 1999-2000, then from 2005 until his selection as permanent chair in 2007.
Ronis was co-founder of the Public Academic Liaison (PAL) program, a collaboration for clinical service and community-based research with the Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Board. Since 1990, PAL has provided more than 300,000 hours of clinical and educational services and model curricula for medical education in community mental health services. Among Ronis' other innovations are the biennial All-Ohio Institute on Community Psychiatry and the Mental Health Executive Leadership Program, which is a collaboration with Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve.
As co-director and co-founder of the CEBP, Ronis provides leadership for training and consultative services that support the dissemination of Integrated Dual Disorders Treatment (IDDT), Supported Employment (SE), Tobacco Recovery Across the Continuum (TRAC), Motivational Interviewing (MI), and other evidence-based and best-practice approaches to serving people with serious mental illness.
Ronis received a Master in Public Health from The Ohio State University in 1995 and completed a NIDA/NIAAA/OSAP Faculty Development Program on Alcoholism and Other Substance Use Disorders, also in 1995. He is a 1990 diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, receiving Added Qualifications in Addiction Psychiatry in 1994, and has served as a senior examiner for the Part II examinations since 1995. He is a past president of the Cleveland Psychiatric Society and the Ohio Psychiatric Association and has served on the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association and on the Board of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists. He is the immediate past chairman of the medical advisory board of NAMI-Greater Cleveland and serves on the boards of the Woodruff Foundation and the Positive Education Program in Cleveland.
Ronis was named a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in 1996. His PAL Program was honored as the Mental Health Program of the Year by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) in 1998. He was awarded the Kathleen Burton Memorial Award from the Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Board in 2000, and was named as an Exemplary Practitioner by the National Alliance on Mental Illness in 2002. In 2003, Ronis was named the first L. Douglas Lenkoski Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University. In 2006, he received the Woodruff Foundation Award for his contributions to the community mental health community.
Ronis was named chairman of the department of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve in September 2007 and psychiatrist-in-chief for University Hospitals Health System in 2009. In January 2010, he was elected as a psychiatry director for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology Inc., a member organization of the American Board of Medical Specialties. Ronis continues to practice, write, and speak about treating serious and persistent psychiatric disorders, addiction psychiatry, co-occurring mental and substance use disorders, and community mental health issues on a local and national level