Wednesday, February 8, 2023 a Celebration of Life for Herbert E. Ward, M.D. at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases.
Dr. Ward served as a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida (UF) for 26 years. Until his retirement from UF in 2021, he served as the Medical Director for adult psychiatry services and Program Director of Neuromodulation Fellowship. Dually trained and boarded in psychiatry and internal medicine, and with a masters’ degree in neuropharmacology, Dr. Ward had clinical and research interests and expertise in multiple arenas. His contributions ranged from increasing recognition and treatment of anxiety and mood disorders in primary care settings, to helping to develop a psychiatry neuromodulation program, with a focus on deep brain stimulation (DBS), in collaboration with the Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery at UF.
Dr. Ward was a core member of the early pioneering studies of the use of DBS for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Tourette Syndrome, work which ultimately led to FDA approval for DBS as an accepted intervention for treatment resistant OCD. For this work, and for his loving and resolute care of many patients with complex and/or treatment resistant forms of psychiatric illness, Dr. Ward was awarded the Kaine Professorship in Neuromodulation in 2015.
Dr. Ward was also an accomplished teacher and mentor. He was the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the NIMH Faculty Scholar Award and several UF College of Medicine Faculty Teaching Awards. Following his retirement from UF, joined the HCA Florida system, where he was a master teacher for their new psychiatry residency program, University of Central Florida Health Consortium Graduate Medical Education-Psychiatry Program. He was recently lauded as the residency’s top teacher. Dr. Ward acted as a mentor for many cohorts of medical students, residents, and junior faculty at UF and, more recently, at HCA North Florida. He will be greatly missed.
