At age 100, the father of preventive medicine is still going strong — as living proof that he was right all along
CHICAGO - Dr. Jeremiah Stamler has a little problem at work. You know the kind: that checklist item that you can't quite seem to check, the one part of the big project that you haven't yet nailed down.
You can't slam the door shut on the work until you get answers.
Stamler knows the problem is out there, just waiting for him. And, frankly, that's just the kind of thing he thrives on.
Jerry Stamler is a professor emeritus and active research doctor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who recently turned 100 years old.
His problem is cheese.
Stamler's specialty is preventive medicine - in fact, he helped invent the field. He did pioneering research into the causes of heart disease, and coined the term "risk factors" to describe circumstantial and genetic contributors that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. While working for Richard J. Daley's Public Health Department in the 1960s, he developed the Heart Disease Control Program, aimed at educating the public and bringing focus to issues the city still grapples with, such as the availability of healthy food in poor neighborhoods.
He's an early adopter of what's known today as the Mediterranean diet, and his own best advertisement, a long-living testament to the lifestyle changes he advocates.
Currently, he's one of only a
