2026 Tulane Medical Alumni Association Young Alumni Leadership Award
Aaron Short, MD, MPH, is a double board-certified psychiatrist in Adult and Geriatric Psychiatry and serves as Medical Director at the Menlo Park VA Medical Center in California in the Palo Alto VA Health Care System in California. He specializes in caring for older adults with complex medical and psychiatric needs, with expertise in neurocognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, Parkinson’s disease psychosis, and frontotemporal dementia. His work also includes psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, grounded in a strong commitment to compassionate, patient-centered care.
A proud graduate of Tulane University, Dr. Short earned degrees in neuroscience and Spanish before completing both his MD and MPH at Tulane. He went on to train in psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Jackson Memorial Hospital and the, where he initially matched into a combined psychiatry and neurology program before ultimately focusing his career on geriatric psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. He and his wife, Christina Le-Short, MD, a pain physician, couples matched for residency in Miami and now have a five year old daughter named Lennox.
In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Short has been an active educator and leader, with faculty appointments at McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Baylor College of Medicine. He has delivered regional and international talks on geriatric psychiatry and remains deeply committed to advancing education and clinical care. As part of his recent move to the Bay Area, these roles will conclude at the end of the academic year, and he is expected to join the Stanford University School of Medicine faculty in the coming year.
