Westchester County Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua Lipsman has been selected as a member of the American Medical Association’s Advisory Committee on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues and has been named Chair of the Preventive Medicine and Family Health Committee for the Medical Society of the State of New York.

Dr. Lipsman will serve on the AMA’s Advisory Committee on GLBT Issues for a two-year term from June 2009 to June 2011 and will chair the Medical Society of the State of New York’s Preventive Medicine and Family Health Committee through the end of 2010.

“I am delighted and honored to serve on both of these committees,” Lipsman said.   “I look forward to working with these groups to improve the health of all New Yorkers and to addressing health issues for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals nationwide.  In addition to my personal dedication to both of these causes, I find these appointments doubly rewarding because they illustrate that the field of medicine recognizes the importance and value of local public health expertise.”

Lipsman is certified by the American Board of Preventive Medicine in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine.  Prior becoming Westchester County Health Commissioner in 2000, Dr. Lipsman was Executive Director of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in Manhattan.

He also has served as head of the Department of Health in Alexandria, Va.  and as medical director and administrator of the city’s system of public health clinics in Houston, Texas, and as a staff physician and community health director on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota.

Lipsman received his M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, and completed a family medicine residency at the St. Paul-Ramsey Medical Center in Minnesota.  He also holds a J.D. from Pace Law School and an M.P.H. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health.