Gary Humfleet, PhD
Gary Humfleet, PhD, passed away peacefully on April 11, 2024, surrounded by family and friends, after a long battle with cancer. Dr. Humfleet was a longtime member of the faculty of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, where he conducted research, provided mentorship to postdoctoral fellows, and was also active in patient care. He was nationally known for his work in smoking cessation clinical trials, particularly related to health disparities, treatment of chronic smokers, and those with co-occurring disorders.
Dr. Humfleet held leadership roles in 13 NIH-funded clinical trials and had been a faculty mentor in NIH-funded postdoctoral training programs (T32s and R25s) for the past 30 years at UCSF, including the Substance Use Disorders Treatment and Services Research Training Program and the Learning for Early Careers in Addiction and Diversity (LEAD) Program, both funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). He led the weekly NIDA T32 substance use research seminar, in which his effective teaching and mentorship has had a lasting impact. Although he provided close mentorship to several individual fellows, every fellow in the NIDA T32 program should be considered as part of Dr. Humfleet’s legacy, as his work in the program enriched all of their training,
For over 20 years, Dr. Humfleet also served as clinical director for the Habit Abatement Clinic where he oversaw the functioning of a clinical enterprise which treated thousands of Bay Area patients and studied the implementation of innovative therapies for the treatment of tobacco dependence that are widely used today. He was a much valued collaborator, working productively with many UCSF and Stanford faculty colleagues, including Sharon Hall, PhD; Ricardo F. Muñoz, PhD; Janice Tsoh, PhD; Joseph Guydish, PhD; Kevin Delucchi, PhD; Jodi Prochaska, PhD, MPH; Meredith Meacham, PhD, MPH; and Danielle Ramo, PhD, among others.
Among his scientific leadership roles, Dr. Humfleet was a member of the Center for Scientific Review Study Section, “Behavioral and Social Consequences of HIV/AIDS,” and a member of the Steering Committee of the National Action Plan Addressing LGBT Tobacco Use.
Dr. Humfleet received his BA in psychology from Bowling Green State University and his PhD in clinical psychology from DePaul University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and became a member of the faculty. He was also a faculty member at California State University, Long Beach before joining the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in 1993.
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a mission focused on research (basic, translational, clinical), teaching, patient care, and public service.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Medical Centers at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mount Zion; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
