Jeffrey T. Barth, PhD, ABPP-CN
Jeffrey T. Barth, PhD, our School of Medicine colleague, mentor, and dear friend passed away on March 8, 2025. He was a pioneer in clinical neuropsychology and focused clinical and scientific attention on patients who sustained mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI). In his quest to understand such injuries and account for any pre-injury factors affecting clinical presentation in the 1980s, Dr. Barth and his colleagues came up with the idea of using football players and launched the first study with preseason and post-concussion testing of athletes in an attempt to understand clinical populations with mTBI. Based on this foundation study, Dr. Barth is widely considered to be the founder of Sports Neuropsychology.
Dr. Barth was hired as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine in 1980, with a joint appointment in Neurosurgery. He retired as the John Edward Fowler Professor, Eminent Scholars Program, in 2015. Dr. Barth was a senior scientist with the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center and used the methodology developed for athletes to understand the various types of brain injuries experienced by military service members. He advocated tirelessly for patients with traumatic brain injury locally through The BridgeLine and the Brain Injury Association of Virginia and at the national and international levels. He served as president of the National Academy of Neuropsychology (NAN) from 1995-1996, was a member of the Houston Conference Task Force, and he chaired multiple work groups that established guidelines on mTBI in the general population and military-related brain injury. Dr. Barth was a member of the American Academy of Neurology Sports Concussion Practice Parameters Guideline Panel and a member of the National Football League Players Association Concussion Committee.
The number of awards and accolades bestowed on Dr. Barth are too many to list here, but he was proud to receive the Distinguished Neuropsychologist Award (2005) and the Distinguished Service Award (2012) from NAN. The Sports Neuropsychology Society awarded Dr. Barth the first Distinguished Mentor Award in 2024 to formally recognize the priority that he placed on mentoring and the support and development of others, including trainees, junior colleagues, and peers. He accepted the award in person at the Philadelphia symposium and was informed that henceforth the award would be known as the Dr. Jeffrey T. Barth Distinguished Mentor Award. He shared that it was his most meaningful award because it reflected his passion and caring for others.
If there was an award for being beloved and packing the fullest expression of life and joy into one lifetime, Dr. Barth would win that, too. He left not only a legacy within clinical neuropsychology and sports neuropsychology, but he also leaves a legacy of a life well-lived, full of laughter, joy, and kindness. Jeff Barth loved his family, he loved caring for patients, he loved his postdocs and colleagues, and he loved to spread laughter and joy.
A memorial service will be held on Friday, March 21 at 11 a.m. at Westminster Presbyterian Church (400 Rugby Rd) in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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