The Reporter: February 1996, Vol.7, No.1
Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology Gets New Name and Chair

The Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology of the Faculty of Medicine and the New York State Psychiatric Institute has a new name. The Morris W. Stroud III Center for Study of Quality of Life-or the Stroud Center for short-is the new name. The Stroud Cente r's namesake is the late Dr. Morris W. Stroud III, whose work in the fields of cardio-logy and physiology made him a pioneer in rehabilitation and geriatric medicine.

Before his death in 1990, Dr. Stroud established a philanthropic legacy for the Stroud Center. Dr. Stroud, along with Dr. Sidney Katz, developed scientific methods to demonstrate the benefits of health care for the quality of life of elders. Their approa ches converged with the program of Dr. Barry Gurland, who joined them in planning for a center to foster continuing advances in this field.

In addition to the name change, a professorship in the Stroud Center has been established to recognize the role Dr. Katz, professor emeritus of geriatric medicine, played in founding the Stroud Program and his outstanding contributions to geriatrics and gerontology. The first incumbent of the Sidney Katz Professorship is Dr. Gurland, director of the Stroud Center.

Dr. Gurland's principal research has been on the epidemiology of mental disorders of the elderly. In the late 1960s, he pioneered the evaluation of the social and functional outcomes of psychiatric treatment and then went on to lead an international team in the first cross-national studies of mental disorder using modern methods of systematic assessment. His recent work has dealt with the boundary between health and disease and the reciprocal effects of psychiatric and physical illness on the quality of life in elders.

Dr. Gurland received his medical degree from the University of Cape Town in 1955. He went on to earn an M.R.C.P. and an M.R.C.Psych. from London's Royal College of Physicians and an academic diploma in psychological medicine.

In 1979, Dr. Gurland became director of Columbia University's Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology and in 1980 was appointed the John E. Borne Professor of Clinical Psychiatry. He has been involved in the center's intramural and interdepartmental progra ms of research, clinical model development, and interdisciplinary education, and he has assisted the professional development of colleagues in geriatrics across many departments at Columbia.

Earlier in 1995, Dr. Gurland received the Senior Investigator Award for Lifetime Achievement in Research from the American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry.