Christopher Gardner, PhD

Professor of Medicine (Stanford Prevention Research Center), Stanford School of
Stanford

Associate Professor of Medicine
Stanford University

CHRISTOPHER GARDNER, PHD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford, the Director of
Stanford Prevention Research Center’s (SPRC) Nutrition Studies Group, and the Director of the
SPRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow Training Program. His primary research focus for the past
decade has been randomized controlled nutrition intervention trials (soy, garlic, antioxidants,
ginkgo, omega-3 fats, vegetarian diets, weight loss diets), testing the effects of these on chronic
disease risk factors that have included blood cholesterol, weight, and inflammatory markers.
His research interests have recently shifted to two new areas. The first is to approach helping
individuals make healthful improvements in diet through motivators beyond health,
piggybacking on ongoing social movements around animal rights and welfare, climate change,
and social justice and their relationships to food. The second is to focus less on trying to
improve individual behaviors around food, and more on a food systems approach that
addresses the quality of food provided by schools, hospitals, worksites, senior centers, prisons,
etc. using a Community Based Participatory Research approach and taking advantage of the
many complementary disciplines represented on the Stanford campus, such as business,
education, law, earth sciences, and medicine. (Palo Alto, CA)