Katherine L. Wisner MD, MS
Medical School: Case Western Reserve University
Specialty: Psychiatry
Career Highlights:
Service with AMWA: AMWA's Woman in Science Award, 2011
Quote: I'm honored to have contributed to research in perinatal mental health over the last 25 years, as it has gone from being essentially unknown in the U.S. to a field of great interest among investigators and clinicians.
Biography:
Katherine L. Wisner MD, MS, is Professor of Psychiatry, Obstetrics/Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Epidemiology and Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and director of the Women’s Behavioral HealthCARE program at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC) of the University Pittsburgh Medical Center. She also serves as an investigator at the Magee-Womens Research Institute. Dr. Wisner obtained an M.S. in Nutrition and an M.D. from Case Western Reserve University, followed by a categorical pediatric internship and general and child psychiatry residency at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and WPIC. She completed as a post-doctoral fellow in Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, a fellowship in Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University in 1996, and a certificate for the Physician Leadership and Management Program at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Wisner’s research focuses on the psychiatric treatment of women of childbearing age. She is recognized as an expert in the treatment of depression during pregnancy and the postpartum period. She currently is the principal investigator on several National Institute of Mental Health- and foundation-funded research projects including the impact of treatment using a class of antidepressant medications on maternal role functioning during the first postpartum year, the use of antidepressants during pregnancy, novel treatments for postpartum depression and the efficacy of bright light treatment for patients with bipolar disorder.
Dr. Wisner is board-certified in general, child and adolescent psychiatry. Her memberships in scientific societies include the Organization of Teratology Information Specialists (Board member), North American Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynecology, Fellowship in the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and the Marce International Society for the Study of Childbearing-Related Psychiatric Illness (immediate past President). Dr. Wisner is a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and was a consultant for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Safe Motherhood Initiative, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s report on Perinatal Depression, and the Food and Drug Administration’s pediatric subcommittee on the effects of maternal SSRI use on newborns. Dr. Wisner completed the prestigious Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program from Drexel University. She has authored more than 160 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. She was awarded AMWA’s Woman in Science Award in 2011.
