Dr. Eric Rimm is the Director of the Program in Cardiovascular Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also an Associate Professor at both Harvard School of Public Health and Channing Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rimm served as the Director of the Health Professionals Follow-up Study for twenty years, a prospective investigation of diet and chronic disease among 50,000 male health professionals. His main research interests include studying associations between diet and other lifestyle characteristics in relation to risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
With grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and the American Heart Associsation, Dr. Rimm is studying the associations of dietary intake and alcohol drinking patterns on chronic disease and the biomarkers that may mediate these associations. In addition, this research includes the study of genetic and other biological predictors of chronic disease with a specific goal of understanding how diet may modify an individual’s genetic predisposition to chronic disease.
He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts including important work on the associations between diet and moderate alcohol consumption and risk of chronic disease in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Some of his other recently published work focuses on the associations between intake of folate and other B vitamins, antioxidants, dietary fiber, and whole grains in the prevention of obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer.