Ruth S. Shim
Ruth S. Shim, MD, MPH, was elected to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Board of Trustees in October 2018, effective January 2019.
Ruth is the Luke & Grace Kim Professor in Cultural Psychiatry and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Davis.
Ruth serves on the editorial boards of JAMA Psychiatry, Psychiatric Services, Community Mental Health Journal, and American Psychiatric Publishing, and is co-editor of the books, The Social Determinants of Mental Health, and Social (In)Justice and Mental Health. She is a former fellow of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program, an at-large member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Forum on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders, and a member of the ad hoc committee of NASEM on Unequal Treatment Revisited: The Current State of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.
In 2021, she received a National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Exemplary Psychiatry Award and the UC Davis Health Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring. In 2024, she was the first recipient of the Washington Psychiatric Society’s Dr. Charles Prudhomme Human Rights Award.
Ruth received her MD from Emory University School of Medicine; her MPH in health policy from the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University; and her BS in psychology from the College of William & Mary. She completed her residency training in general psychiatry and a fellowship in community psychiatry at Emory University School of Medicine.
