Psychiatrist to Become Next President of the AMA

Jeremy Lazarus, M.D.

Psychiatrist Jeremy Lazarus, M.D., was elected Saturday as president-elect of the AMA. Lazarus, speaker of the AMA House of Delegates and a past speaker of the APA Assembly, is only the second psychiatrist to be president of the AMA. The first was Rock Slyester, M.D., who was installed as the 93rd president of the AMA on May 16, 1939.

Lazarus, who ran unopposed for president-elect, is a private-practice psychiatrist in Denver and was reelected speaker of the AMA House of Delegates in June 2010, after having served as vice speaker from 2003 to 2007. He is a past president of the Colorado Medical Society, Colorado Psychiatric Society, and the Arapahoe County Medical Society. He serves as chair of the AMA Board of Trustees (BOT) Compensation Committee and as a member of the AMA-BOT Executive and Finance committees. Representing the AMA on the Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured and the Ride for World Health, he has been one of the AMA's chief spokespersons on issues involving the uninsured. Read more about Lazarus and psychiatrists' involvement in policymaking at the AMA in Psychiatric News at http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/46/11/3.1.full and http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/46/10/8.1.full.