16 June 2008

World leading nutritionist to give Greatest Minds Lecture

Dr Walter Willett, one of the world’s leading nutritionists, will give the Greatest Minds lecture at the University of Dundee this week, examining whether diet and lifestyle may be our greatest defences against major diseases.

Dr Willett, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, will deliver his lecture, titled `The Pursuit of Health: Is Contemporary Medicine Taking Us Down the Wrong Path?’ at the University on Wednesday, June 18th.

At an accelerating rate, medical research is providing stunning new insights, including the decoding of the human and many other genomes. Despite the new knowledge and huge investments in treatment, rates of many diseases in the US are declining only slightly and in some population subgroups overall mortality is increasing.

Dr Willett’s lecture will show that our investments in health ignore information that most major diseases are largely preventable by known dietary and lifestyle modifications. He says a more balanced approach would have a much greater impact on the health of our societies.

The lecture takes place at 6 pm on Wednesday in the New Teaching Block, Old Hawkhill, Dundee. The lecture is free to attend and open to all. Tickets can be obtained from the Tower Building Reception or by emailing events@dundee.ac.uk.

NOTES TO EDITORS
Dr Walter Willett is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr Willett is the most cited nutritionist internationally, and is among the five most cited persons in all fields of clinical science. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research.

Much of his work over the last 25 years has focussed on the development of methods to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. He has applied these methods starting in 1980 in the Nurses' Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Together, these cohorts that include nearly 300,000 men and women with repeated dietary assessments are providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of food choices.

Dr Willett has published over 1,000 articles, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for heart disease and cancer, and has written the textbook, Nutritional Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press. His book for the general public, Eat, Drink and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, has appeared on most major bestseller lists, and he has recently published a second book, co-authored with Mollie Katzen, for a general audience, Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less.

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