A native of Oakland, California, Duane McWaine attended Longfellow, Crocker Highlands, and King Estates public schools before graduating from CPS high school. After receiving his AB degree at Princeton University, Duane completed medical school at the University of Southern California, now called Keck School of medicine, and psychiatry residency at Harbor General / UCLA Medical Center.
Duane opened his psychiatric private practice in West Los Angeles in 1988, focusing on HIV/AIDS, mood disorders, and addressing stigma in the Persian communities in Southern California and abroad. During that time he served as medical director at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services while teaching in the department of Biobehavioral sciences at UCLA Medical School. Appointed by Governor Gray Davis and continuing under Governor Schwarzenegger, he served on California’s statewide Council on Mentally Ill Offenders, pursuing ongoing interests in the severely mentally ill, stigma reduction and the intersection between the mental health and criminal justice systems.
After spending four years in New Zealand and Samoa, Duane returned to California, providing psychiatric care in inpatient and assertive outpatient psychiatric settings before joining Anthem Blue Cross in 2014. As medical director for Medi-Cal Behavioral Health at Anthem, he worked with colleagues in physical health and provider communities to develop initiatives and build teams focused on physical health / behavioral health integration, substance use disorder treatment in the primary care setting, and transgender services.
Currently, Duane provides consultation services to health plans, medical start-ups, pain management and transgender providers and PhARMa while caring for patients in acute psychiatric inpatient settings.