When Craig Rubin, M.D., arrived in Dallas in 1982, it was a long way from his East Coast roots, both geographically and culturally.

Freshly graduated from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School (UMDNJ, now part of Rutgers University), Dr. Rubin came to UT Southwestern solely for the outstanding clinical training.

“It didn’t matter that there were no mountains or ocean, and I didn’t care that, at the time, the bread wasn’t very good or that the only Italian food around was little more than ketchup on noodles. All I cared about was that UT Southwestern had an outstanding training program,” Dr. Rubin says.

The more he learned about the institution and from it, the more he felt the need to extend his stay. More than four decades later, he’s still here.

In 1985, he was invited to join UT Southwestern’s Division of General Internal Medicine (GIM) in the Department of Internal Medicine. In 1989 he became the sole member and Chief of the Section of Geriatrics within GIM, and in 2013 he became Chief of the newly formed Division of Geriatric Medicine under Internal Medicine.

“When I started, the Division was very small,” Dr. Rubin remembers. “I think there were five of us in GIM. At the time, the Division and Parkland Memorial Hospital received a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to support models of care for older patients at high risk of hospital readmission. In the randomized trial, an interdisciplinary team was assembled that provided comprehensive geriatric care compared with those receiving standard care. I volunteered to be the physician member of the team.”

Like his residency, the study was to last three years and at its conclusion, the doctor expected to head back east. But a geriatrics nurse specialist on the team complimented his fine work and encouraged him to stay. So he did. It was a great career move for both Dr. Rubin and the patients who have benefited from his work, which has focused on the study of age-related osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, comprehensive geriatric assessment, and geriatrics medical education.

Dr. Rubin never dreamed three years at UT Southwestern would turn into four decades on the faculty.

“I still get a great deal of satisfaction from my work. I have been so fortunate to have received extraordinary support from my patients, the community, the institution, and incredible, brilliant, caring, and dedicated colleagues these past four decades,” Dr. Rubin says.

Dr. Rubin is a Distinguished Teaching Professor who has a secondary appointment in the Charles and Jane Pak Center for Mineral Metabolism and Clinical Research. He also directs endowment proceeds available from the Mildred Wyatt and Ivor P. Wold Center for Geriatric Care, the Geriatric Medicine Fund in Honor of Craig D. Rubin, M.D., and the Lorraine Sulkin Schein Endowment Fund.

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