Dr. David Katz
David L. Katz MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP is a nationally renowned authority on nutrition, weight control, and the prevention of chronic disease.
He is an Associate Professor (adjunct) of Public Health Practice, and formerly the Director of Medical Studies in Public Health, at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Katz directs the Yale Prevention Research Center which he co-founded in 1998. As director of this clinical research laboratory dedicated to chronic disease prevention, Dr. Katz has served as Principal Investigator for numerous community and clinical trials, and has acquired and managed over $20 million in research funds.
Dr. Katz earned his BA from Dartmouth College (in 3 years), his MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his MPH from the Yale University School of Public Health. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine, and Preventive Medicine/Public Health.
He has practiced primary care/Internal Medicine for over 15 years, and early in his career worked part-time as an emergency physician during a 6-year period. In 2000, he founded, and directs, the Integrative Medicine Center (IMC) in Derby, Connecticut, a unique facility in which conventionally trained and naturopathic physicians work collaboratively to provide patients with evidence-based, holistic care. This model program has been described in published papers, and presented at professional conferences around the United States, and abroad. Clinical innovations at the IMC include novel therapies for chronic pain, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and Parkinson's disease, some currently under evaluation through clinical trials. The IMC is the site of one of the nation's few residency training programs in Integrative Medicine, co-founded and co-directed by Dr. Katz, and provided each year to one recent graduate of a Naturopathic medical college.
In 1996, Dr. Katz played a lead role in designing, and implementing, one of the nation's first combined residency training programs in Internal Medicine & Preventive Medicine, at Griffin Hospital in Derby, CT. He served as director of the residency program from 1998 to 2000. This novel program, published in Academic Medicine (Katz DL et al. An integrated residency in internal and preventive medicine. Acad Med. 2000;75:41-9), leads to board eligibility in both Internal Medicine and Preventive Medicine in four years of training, and includes a MPH degree awarded by the Yale School of Public Health. In his role as medical educator, Dr. Katz has directed courses and provided lectures for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year medical students; medical residents; public health students; nursing students; PA students; and undergraduates at Yale University.
Katz has published nearly 100 scientific articles and chapters; innumerable abstracts, newsletter articles, health columns, essays, poems; and nine books to date. Among these are a nutrition textbook for clinicians (Nutrition in Clinical Practice, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2001), used widely in medical education including at the Harvard School of Medicine. The 2nd edition of this nutrition textbook is now in preparation (under contract: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins), as is the 3rd edition of a preventive medicine textbook he co-authored (under contract: Elsevier). His 9th and most recent book, The Flavor Point Diet, (Rodale: January, 2006) introduces a groundbreaking strategy for weight control based on the principle of sensory specific satiety, and the thoughtful distribution of flavors; it is in bookstores nationwide as of January, 2006, and in Europe as of April, 2006.
Elected to the governing board of the American College of Preventive Medicine in 2002, and elected President of the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine in 2004, Katz has twice been recognized as one of America's top physicians in Preventive Medicine by the Consumers' Research Council of America.
In 2005, Dr. Katz became a Medical Contributor for ABC News, with regular appearances on Good Morning America, 20/20, World News Tonight, and other ABC programming. Also in 2005, Dr. Katz became a syndicated health/nutrition columnist for The New York Times.
Katz is the nutrition columnist to O, The Oprah Magazine (his column, entitled "The Way to Eat," appears in every issue), and a frequent contributor of expert opinion on nutrition and obesity to the news media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, HealthDay News, The Associated Press, and others. He is a contributing editor to O, The Oprah Magazine, and a member of the editorial advisory boards of Health Magazine, Arbor Nutrition Updates, The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and Men's Health, among others. He has authored a weekly preventive medicine column for Connecticut's New Haven Register since 1997.
Katz and his work have been featured in multiple issues of Men's Health magazine, three cover-story articles in TIME magazine, and in Newsweek, with frequent contributions to a long list of other best-selling magazines including Shape, Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Child, Parenting, Glamour, Woman's World, Ladies Home Journal, Business Week, Marie Claire, Prevention, Better Homes & Gardens, Real Simple, US News & World Report, and others. He has appeared on The Today Show, 20/20, 48 HOURS, World News Tonight, NiteBeat, PBS, CNN, the BBC and NPR radio, The Montel Williams Show, and more. He was a featured speaker at the TIME Magazine/ABC News Obesity Summit in Williamsburg, VA, in June, 2004, has appeared in PBS' successful medical show, 2nd Opinion, as well as in a PBS mini-series on the obesity epidemic, hosted by Walter Cronkite, in 2005. Also in 2005, he appeared as the medical/nutrition expert on a weight loss program entitled Celebrity Fit Club, produced for VH1. His op-eds on the obesity epidemic and related topics have appeared in The Hartford Courant, Orlando Sentinel, New York Newsday, ABC.com, Houston Chronicle, and TheWall Street Journal.
Dr. Katz has been an expert consultant on obesity control to the US Secretary of Health; the US FDA Commissioner; several Governors; private corporations; and the health insurance industry. He is currently an advisor on weight control policy to the National Governors Association, and gave the opening plenary address at a meeting of the nation's governors in Washington, D.C., in February, 2006 (video of speech available at: http://www.c-spanstore.org/shop/).
Katz lectures on effective strategies for weight control and better nutritional health to audiences ranging from elementary school children, to academic colleagues and public health leaders, and has speaking engagements booked a year in advance, or more. In 2005, he joined the prestigious Harry Walker Agency speakers' bureau. He has been the keynote speaker at innumerable professional conferences throughout the US and abroad, frequently earning standing ovations from his audiences. He has presented his research and perspectives at annual meetings of The American Diabetes Association, The American College of Cardiology, The American Heart Association, The American Dietetic Association, The North American Association for the Study of Obesity, The American College of Preventive Medicine, The American Public Health Association, The Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada, The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, and more.
He and his wife, Catherine, have developed an innovative nutrition training program for elementary school students and their parents, "The Nutrition Detectives Program," now being piloted by schools in as many as eight states, and adopted district-wide in Independence, Missouri; evaluation of the program is on-going. Katz has also developed a physical activity program for schools entitled "ABC for Fitness" (activity bursts in the classroom), intended to distribute bouts of physical activity throughout the school day to cultivate fitness, dissipate restless energy, improve behavior and concentration, and enhance academic performance. This program, too, is currently under evaluation in the elementary schools of the Independence, Missouri district. These programs, along with others directed toward obesity prevention and control and health promotion for families, comprise a research agenda entitled "OPOSE: optimizing the prevention of obesity through strategic evaluation," for which Dr. Katz is currently raising funds. Details are available at www.davidkatzmd.com/fundraising.asp.
Katz and his wife have provided nutrition/cooking lessons to both children and adults at the Silo Cooking School in New Milford, CT, where Chef Jacques Pepin, among others, also teaches. The Katz' recipes have been featured on television programs in both the US and Canada, in O, The Oprah Magazine, Child Magazine, Women's Health & Fitness, and elsewhere; and are the basis for the meal plan in both The Flavor Point Diet and an on-line program for weight control and health promotion at www.thewaytoeat.net.
Katz holds five patents to date on inventions related to health promotion, with several others under development. His hobbies include cooking, creative writing, carpentry, skiing, hiking, and equestrianism. He works out at least 40 minutes most days, committed to "practicing what he preaches." Katz believes he should not be offering advice to patients, readers, or the public that he himself would be unwilling to follow.
Katz lives in Connecticut with his wife Catherine, and their five children: Rebecca (17); Corinda (16); Valerie (11); Natalia (10); and Gabriel (7). Not to mention 3 dogs and a gecko...
