Jonathan Posner, MD, Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke Health, has been chosen to serve as System Psychiatrist-in-Chief and Chair of Vanderbilt Health’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He will assume this role on Oct. 1.
Posner, who also serves Duke Health as the J.P. Gibbons Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and as the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science’s Vice Chair for Research, will succeed Stephan Heckers, MD, MSc, Vanderbilt Health’s longtime chair.
Heckers, who holds the William P. and Henry B. Test Chair in Schizophrenia Research and the Donald and Charlotte Test Clinical Directorship in Psychosis Programs, announced plans in December 2025 to step down from the leadership role he has held for more than 20 years. Through this transition, Heckers will continue to see patients, conduct research and lead the Vanderbilt Early Psychosis Program.
“As the demand for behavioral health services continues to rise here and across the nation, the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences will play an increasingly important role,” said Jeff Balser, MD, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vanderbilt Health and Dean of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “I am delighted to welcome Dr. Posner to Vanderbilt Health. He has distinguished himself as a thought leader in his discipline and has presented an exciting vision for the future of Psychiatry’s academic, research and clinical missions.
“Again, I want to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Heckers for his steadfast service as our longest-serving clinical chair. He is stepping away from this role after two decades of remarkable accomplishments that have positioned Psychiatry and Vanderbilt Health overall for a bright future.”
Vanderbilt Health’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which is approaching its 80th anniversary, provides inpatient and ambulatory care to children, adolescents and adults in the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital (VPH) and in other locations throughout the Vanderbilt Health system. The neighboring Nashville Veterans Affairs Medical Center also serves as a training site for the department’s residents. Internationally recognized for its excellence in research, the department’s NIH-funded research portfolio currently surpasses $10 million, while total grants and contracts exceed $23 million.
“The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences provides a cornerstone of our care, offering a full range of specialized services for patients of all ages. Under Dr. Heckers’ leadership we have worked hard to ensure our patients can receive these services in a highly personalized manner,” said Jane Freedman, MD, Deputy CEO and Chief Health System Officer for Vanderbilt Health.
“I want to welcome Dr. Posner to our leadership team and look forward to his contributions as we further strengthen the department’s clinical programs.”
Posner, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, joined Duke Health in 2021 as Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. There, his research has included the use of AI tools to accurately predict when adolescents are at increased risk for future serious mental health issues before symptoms become severe. He has also published research to better characterize the underlying biology of ADHD.
Posner, whose research has been published in leading journals including JAMA Psychiatry, JAMA Pediatrics, The Lancet Psychiatry and The Lancet, has also focused on neurodevelopment with an emphasis on MRI approaches to studying neurobiological correlations of mental illness and cognitive development.
He is a principal investigator on three longitudinal, family-based studies aimed at understanding the influence of family history, psychosocial adversity and prenatal exposures on the development of neural circuits involved in executive functions and emotion regulation.
“We are fortunate to have recruited Dr. Posner, an accomplished physician-scientist, as the next chair of our department. We are poised to reach new heights under his leadership,” said Heckers.
Prior to his service at Duke Health, Posner directed a pediatric brain imaging laboratory at Columbia University, where he was the Suzanne Crosby Murphy Professor of Psychiatry and Co-Director of the Center for Intergenerational Psychiatry at New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Also while at Columbia University, he was Director of Research Training in Child Psychiatry, where he mentored numerous junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows and psychiatric residents, and was a faculty member of four T32 postdoctoral training programs.
Posner earned his medical degree from the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. He completed his psychiatry residency at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute and his child and adolescent psychiatry clinical fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University.
“Stepping into a department that Stephan Heckers has led with such distinction is both an honor and a responsibility that I take very seriously. I have been struck by the quality of the faculty, the strength of the institution, and the genuine warmth of the Vanderbilt community. I am thrilled to be joining Vanderbilt Health and look forward to the work ahead,” said Posner.
