Barbara and William Rosenthal Chair of the Department of Medicine Neil W. Schluger, M.D., is the Barbara and William Rosenthal Chair of the Department of Medicine at New York Medical College (NYMC) and director of medicine at Westchester Medical Center (WMC), in Valhalla, New York, roles he assumed in July of 2020. In addition to directing the department of more 425 faculty members and teaching more than 800 medical students and residents at NYMC, Dr. Schluger focuses on public health challenges including tuberculosis, tobacco use, air pollution and the global aspects of lung health. In 2021, he took on the additional role of associate dean for clinical and translational research in the School of Medicine (SOM).
Dr. Schluger is a founder and director of the East Africa Training Initiative in Pulmonary Medicine. Through this program, the first generation of pulmonary physicians in Ethiopia has been trained and an academically-oriented pulmonary division has been established at Ethiopia’s leading public hospital. He also serves as senior advisor for science at Vital Strategies, a global not-for-profit organization devoted to public health issues.
He has been a principal investigator in the Tuberculosis Trials Consortium, an international collaboration sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 25 years and was the chair of the consortium from 2000-2016. He is also co-editor and a co-author of The Tobacco Atlas, the definitive work describing the extent and consequences of the global epidemic of tobacco use, published by Vital Strategies and the American Cancer Society.
He is the author of more than 170 articles, chapters and books, and his work has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet and The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, among other leading journals. He is an Associate Editor of The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Medicine. Dr. Schluger is a past-president of the American Lung Association of New York.
Prior to joining NYMC and WMC, Dr. Schluger served as chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). Under his leadership, the division maintained strong programs in basic, translational and clinical research with a highly competitive fellowship training program and grew from 10 faculty with an $8 million operating budget to 50 faculty with an operating budget of $40 million. Most recently, he served as professor of medicine, epidemiology and environmental health sciences, director of the Population and Global Health Track for the Scholars Projects Program and co-director of the Program for Education in Global and Population Health for the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.
Board-certified in pulmonary disease and internal medicine, Dr. Schluger earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and completed a residency and served as chief resident in internal medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital in New York. He later completed a three-year fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at The New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center.
The Rosenthal Chair was endowed in 2001 by William Rosenthal, M.D., and his wife Barbara. A significant contributor to scientific advancement in the field of gastroenterology, Dr. Rosenthal, who became the College’s first endowed professor in 1969, trained generations of physicians who have contributed to the field of gastroenterology through research, teaching and clinical care during his decades-long tenure.
