Jonathan Rodnick
Longtime UCSF educator and clinician Jonathan "Jack" Rodnick, MD, former chair of the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine, died unexpectedly on Jan. 26 while vacationing in Hawaii.
A memorial and celebration of the life and contributions of Rodnick will be held on Sunday, March 2, at 2 p.m., in Cole Hall, 513 Parnassus. The memorial will be followed by a reception at the Faculty-Alumni House, 745 Parnassus Ave.
Rodnick achieved a career of distinction in family medicine. His national leadership in family medicine has been widely recognized, and his dedication to the success of the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine has earned him the admiration of the family medicine community at UCSF.
Under Rodnick's direction, the department grew to become one of the nation's premier family medicine departments. During his 14-year tenure, Rodnick led the department through such significant achievements as the development of the student-run homeless clinic, the national HIV "Warmline," the Center on Social Disparities in Health and the Family and Community Medicine Collaborative Research Network, moving the department into the top ten in national rankings of departments of family medicine.
Rodnick was recognized by faculty as a fair and considerate leader who was fully devoted to the overall success of the department. He demonstrated a commendable level of dedication to University service through his wholehearted commitment to his duties as department chair and participation in many key University committees.
Rodnick was a role model as a clinician-scholar. As one of the early academicians in the new specialty of family practice, with limited access to extramural grants and minimal research infrastructure, Rodnick demonstrated great ingenuity and resourcefulness in building a body of scholarly work in clinical research. His studies and publications on electronic medical records and computerized reminders for preventive services have been highly influential in primary care practice.
Rodnick's leadership as an academic family physician was recognized by his election as president of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (the academic society for family medicine) in 1987, and more recently by his selection to the National Advisory Committee for the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. He achieved international influence through his work in building linkages between programs in medical education in the United States and China, England and other nations.
Rodnick played an active role as a clinician and educator in the department. An educator for more than 30 years, he taught students and residents, both by delivering didactic presentations on preventive health care and related subjects and by working as a teaching attending physician at the UCSF Family Medical Center at Lakeshore and the San Francisco General Hospital Family Health Center.
The primary focus of Rodnick's research was on the broad area of understanding and encouraging the global development of family medicine/primary care education and clinical programs, particularly in health systems in African and Asian countries. He was invited to Japan in the 1980s to help that country start a family medicine postgraduate training program and to China in the early 1990s to help upgrade that country's poorly trained primary care doctors. The visits to Japan and China led to his involvement in creating a visiting faculty program and to develop general guidelines for the development of the family medicine field for these countries.
Rodnick's other research area focused on ways to increase clinical prevention in primary care through improvements in public health systems. He was an advocate for public health approaches to clinical prevention of infectious diseases.
Rodnick graduated from Yale University with a BS degree in biophysics in 1964. He attended UCLA School of Medicine, where he graduated magna cum laude and was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha in his junior year. He completed his internship at San Francisco General Hospital in 1969 and his family practice residency training at University of Vermont in 1973.
Rodnick initially joined UCSF as a clinical instructor without salary and assistant director of the UCSF-affiliated Family Practice Residency Program at Community Hospital in Santa Rosa in 1973. Rodnick was promoted to assistant clinical professor in 1976 and to associate clinical professor in 1982. He was appointed to professor of clinical family and community medicine (Step 1) in 1988 and to professor (Step 2) in 1991.
Rodnick was a member of the following professional organizations: American Academy of Family Physicians, Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, American Public Health Association and Physicians for a National Health Program. He was a manuscript reviewer for many of the leading medical journals, including
Journal of Family Practice, Family Medicine, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. He is listed in the Best Doctors in America.
