Dietary Biomarkers Study
Now enrolling for controlled feeding study!
221 Longwood Ave.
75 Francis Street (food pick up)
Boston, MA
Meet the researchers
Frank Sacks, MD
Professor of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, Department of Nutrition, HSPH; PI, Harvard Intervention Core
Dr. Sacks is Professor of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in the Nutrition Department of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Sacks led the panel that designed the DASH Study, which crafted a healthful eating pattern and demonstrated that it lowered blood pressure more effectively than any previous dietary treatment. Subsequently Dr. Sacks led the DASH-Sodium study, which determined the dose-response effect of dietary sodium on BP. These multi-center National Heart Lung and Blood Institute trials found major beneficial additive effects of low salt and a dietary pattern rich in fruits and vegetables on blood pressure. He also led the landmark PoundsLost trial which showed the effectiveness of several healthy diets with differing fat, carbohydrate and protein content on long term weight loss. Currently, he is studying the role of diet to prevent cognitive decline in aging. His laboratory studies human HDL metabolism and subspeciation.
Dr. Sacks received the 2011 Research Achievement Award of the American Heart Association for lifetime research accomplishment; and the Distinguished Scientist Award in 2020.
Jonathan Williams, MD, MMSc
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Hypertension, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Jonathan Williams, MD, MMSc is a trained endocrinologist and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Cardiovascular Endocrine Human Genetics Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His research explores the mechanisms that contribute to cardiometabolic risk, focusing on the interactions of dietary salt and genetic predisposition through physiologic phenotyping protocols in human subjects and translational work in animal models. He has a particular interest in understanding the effect of race, sex, and aging as disease modifiers in genetic models.
He currently Chairs the MassGeneral Brigham IRB, Directs the Harvard Clinical and Translational Research Academy, and is the Lead Medical Research Officer for the Center for Clinical Investigations at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Deirdre Tobias, ScD
Assistant Professor of Nutrition, HSPH
Dr. Deirdre Tobias is an obesity and nutritional epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. She received her doctorate and postdoctoral training at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA. Dr. Tobias was appointed the Academic Editor for the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2019. Her research focuses on the role of diet and lifestyle for obesity and its major chronic diseases, including gestational diabetes and type 2 diabetes, and has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association. She contributes to the development and analyses of healthful dietary patterns, metabolomics, and nutrition epidemiologic methods, and is co-Instructor of Nutritional Epidemiology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.