The Division of General Internal Medicine is a Division located and managed decentrally at three locations of the University of California, San Francisco campuses. Each site has its own uniqueness but all excel in the delivery of high quality, culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate primary and preventive health care; conducting innovative, population-based and epidemiological research; and training the best doctors of the future.

Robert H. Crede, MD
Founder of Primary Care at UCSF

The Crede Lectureship honors Robert H. Crede, MD, Professor of Medicine at UCSF (1949-1989), who was a national champion of primary care. Dr. Crede developed comprehensive ambulatory medical services at UCSF and also changed pre-doctoral and postdoctoral medical education to emphasize a comprehensive approach to all patient problems, especially in the ambulatory and home settings. The honor of hosting The Crede Lecture is shared and rotated by the Division of General Internal Medicine of the Department of Medicine, the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Division of General Pediatrics of the Department of Pediatrics.

Dr. Crede was born in Chicago August 11, 1915 and received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1937 honored with Phi Beta Kappa. He received his MD at UCSF in 1941 and was awarded the Gold Headed Cane at graduation. After serving as an intern at San Francisco General Hospital (1941-1942), he entered the U.S. Army for three years as a member of the 30th General Hospital. Dr. Crede returned to UCSF as a resident in Medicine (1944-1946) and later chief resident (1946-1947). He married Marjorie Lorain on August 29, 1947 and they had three children. From 1947 to 1949 he was a Commonwealth fellow in psychosomatic medicine at the University of Cincinnati. The comprehensive, bio-psychosocial model approach to patients learned during that fellowship had a significant effect on his subsequent professional life. In 1949, Dr. Crede returned to UCSF on faculty in the Department of Medicine, served as assistant dean (1955-1960) and associate dean (1960-1973), and became a full professor in 1960. From 1980 to 1986, Dr. Crede served as associate dean for academic affairs. He elected emeritus status in 1986 but continued to be active in the school until 1989.

In 1965, Dr. Crede assumed responsibility for a major clinical service of the Department of Medicine when he became director of the Comprehensive Medical Clinics. In 1966 he established the Division of Ambulatory and Community Medicine and was the first Chief; he involved the four UCSF schools in this endeavor (Nursing, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Medicine). In collaboration with David Werdegar, H. Vandervoort,,Dace Mitchell, Mary Malloy, Donald Fink, Joseph Barbaccia, Nancy Byl, H.Chinn, H.Werdegar, and Barbara Resnik, they developed the first interdisciplinary, inter-school ambulatory clerkship for medical students, the first such in the U.S. In 1980 from this autonomous Division of Ambulatory and Community Medicine in the School of Medicine came the Division of General Internal Medicine and the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Again he employed a comprehensive solution in structuring the model academic unit and its educational programs, drawing on faculty and students from many disciplines. From its inception, the division of Ambulatory and Community Medicine (ACM) became a model care setting for the nation with its focus on primary medical care. Later, the division began a postdoctoral and post-residency fellowship in Ambulatory and Community Medicine. A series of bold new programs followed: a residency in Primary Care General Internal Medicine in 1974; a residency in General (primary care) Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics; and a residency in Family Practice at the San Francisco General Hospital. These training programs, developed under the leadership of Dr. Crede, were effectively husbanded by this dedicated, wise visionary in his capacity as honored and uncompromising academician, gentle, firm educator and careful, diplomatic statesman, but most of all a superb clinician and accessible and encouraging mentor.

In 1972, ambulatory clinical services moved into the new Ambulatory Care Center that Dr. Crede envisioned, planned, and helped set up. The building, renamed the Robert H. Crede Ambulatory Care Center in 1994 at the suggestion of Joseph Martin, chancellor of UCSF, stands today as a clinical service center and as a tribute to a man who gave so much to the campus from 1949, when he joined the faculty, until 1989, when he finally retired. Dr. Crede passed away on February 21, 1996. Marjorie Crede lives in Moraga, daughter Victoria lives in Fair oaks and Christina lives in the East Bay. His son Bill graduated from UCSF School of Medicine and went to Yale for internal medicine residency and remained there on the faculty.