Dr. Sacks is involved in research and public policy in nutrition, cholesterol disorders, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. He also is an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he has a specialty clinic in hyperlipidemia.

His research program is a combination of laboratory research on human lipoprotein metabolism, and clinical trials in nutrition and cardiovascular disease. The laboratory research concerns the acute and long term effects of diet on the kinetics of lipoproteins, cholesterol carrying particles, in humans.

Dr. Sacks is Chair of the Steering Committee for the recently completed DASH-Sodium trial. This multi center NHLBI trial studied the effect of dietary patterns and salt intake on blood pressure in persons with mild hypertension or high normal blood pressure.

Dr. Sack is Co-Chair of the recently funded OmniHeart Trial, a multicenter feeding trial that compares higher protein and higher unsaturated fat diets to the low-fat DASH diet to determine optimal macronutrient content for blood pressure and blood lipid control. Dr. Sacks was the Principal Investigator of the Cholesterol and Recurrent Events trial (CARE) which found that pravastatin treatment reduced coronary events and stroke in patients with average cholesterol concentrations. Continuing analysis is showing that newly identified lipoprotein subfractions are strong predictors of recurrent coronary events.

Finally, he is Principal Investigator of a newly awarded NHBLI trial on dietary approaches for weight loss and maintenance. In this trial, 4 diets varying in protein, carbohydrate and fat content will be tested in 800 overweight people for 2 years. In a pilot study, a Mediterranean-style moderate fat diet produced better long-term maintenance of weight loss than a conventional low-fat diet.

Dr. Sacks has over 110 publications of original research, and numerous reviews, editorials, and chapters.

Dr. Sacks is active in national and international committees and conferences in nutrition and health guidelines. He is member of the American Heart Association Nutrition Committee, the policy making group for nutrition at the AHA. He chaired a recent European-American consensus conference on dietary fat and health, and an international conference on HDL and cardiovascular disease. He was a member for 7 years of the Nutrition Study Section, the grant review committee on nutrition for the NIH.

M.D., 1977, Columbia University