Kerim Munir, M.D., MPH, D.Sc. - Psychiatry

Director of Psychiatry, Institute for Community Inclusion/University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD)

Director of Psychiatry Training, Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) Program, Boston Children’s Hospital

Director, Mental Health/Developmental Disorders & the Fogarty /NIH International Bioethics Research Training Programs, Boston Children's Hospital

Attending Physician in Psychiatry, Developmental Medicine Center, Boston Children's Hospital

Consulting Physician in Psychiatry, Autism Spectrum Center Team, Down Syndrome Program, Tuberous Sclerosis Multi-Disciplinary Program and Complex Care Service, Boston Children's Hospital

BSc, Physiology, University College London (UCL)

MB BS, Medicine, University of London, London, UK

MPH, Epidemiology, Harvard University, School of Public Health

DSc, Maternal Child Health and Psychiatric Epidemiology, Harvard University, School of Public Health

Residency in Adult Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

Residency in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, McLean Hospital, Belmont

Klaus Peter Award in International Medical Education (All Faculty), Harvard Medical School

Member, Aesculapian Society, Harvard Medical School

Society Research Fellow (Global Health), William Hinton Society, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Distinguished Fellow, American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP)

George Tarjan Award for Contributions in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, AACAP

Chair, Scientific Section on Psychiatry of Intellectual/Developmental Disorders & Chair, Working Group on Intellectual Disability, Presidential Action Plan 2020-2023, World Psychiatric Association

Member, WHO Rehabilitation 2030 Program, Development Group on Intellectual Disability

Kerim Munir, MD, MPH, DSc, DFAACAP is Director of Psychiatry in the University Center of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at the Boston Children's Hospital and Society Research Fellow (Global Health) in the Scholars in Medicine Program at Harvard Medical School. He completed his medical studies at UCL as a Commonwealth Scholar and trained in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He holds a doctorate in psychiatric epidemiology and maternal child health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Munir’s research scholarship focuses on developmental psychopathology and epidemiology of childhood mental disorders. He has been PI on multiple, contiguous, NIH research, and research training grants, sponsored by the NIMH and Fogarty International Center in the past 2 decades, specifically including the prestigious International Collaborative Operational Health Research Training Awards (ICOHRTA) and the Non-Communicative Diseases Across the LIFESPAN (NCD-LIFESPAN) global initiative. During this period, the D43 research training program sponsored peer reviewed publications in child mental health that made important impacts including a national study of epidemiology of childhood mental disorders in Turkey, as well as mental health of institutionally reared children (including over-representation of youth with developmental disabilities). He had earlier led the UNICEF Psychosocial Schools Intervention Project in the aftermath of the 1999 Marmara devastating earthquakes in Turkey as an international program officer. He had also served as the director and principal author of the competitively funded first National Mental Health Policy by the World Bank/Ministry of Health in Turkey. He was a member of the Expert Review Group that formulated the Content Model for Intellectual Developmental Disorder for the revision of WHO ICD-11, later adopted by the DSM-5, as a neurodevelopmental disorder. He has mentored and trained numerous US and global investigators, serving as US research partner/mentor on the innovative Grand Challenges Canada/Bill and Melinda Gates funded study of children with neurodevelopmental disorder (0-36 months) in the National Program of Immunization, Lagos, Nigeria, as well as an innovative Dubai-Harvard Medical School Research Foundation funded study implementing a mental health program and home-based training for mothers of children with autism in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has chaired the World Innovation Summit in Health (WISH) Autism Forum in Doha, Qatar (2016) and he was the lead author of the forum report Autism: Global Framework for Action. Dr. Munir’s awards include an all-faculty Klaus Peter Award in International Medical Education, Harvard Medical School and an International Award in Research Capacity Development by the Turkish National Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Association. He has also received the George Tarjan Award in Developmental Disabilities by AACAP; the T. Berry Brazelton Award in Pediatric Innovation by Boston Children's Hospital; and the Governor’s Award for services in developmental disabilities in Massachusetts. Dr. Munir has been recognized over consecutive years as ‘Top Doc’ in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry by Castle Connolly and Boston Magazine. He currently chairs the Work Group on Intellectual Disability of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) sponsored by the Presidential Action Plan 2020-2023, and the WPA Scientific Section on Psychiatry of Intellectual/Developmental Disorder and is the co-editor of the Textbook on Intellectual Disability and Autism published by Springer in 2021. He has served as a Vice-President of the International Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professionals.