Dr. Robert D. Langer, MD, MPH
Robert D. Langer, MD, MPH, is an epidemiologist, family physician and preventive medicine specialist with more than 40 years of experience as a primary care physician. Professor Langer has over 35 years of experience in research studies of cardiovascular disease, hormone replacement therapy, postmenopausal chronic diseases, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, osteoporosis and dementia, including the application of pharmacoepidemiology to these conditions. His scholarship has produced approximately 200 published manuscripts in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. He has provided expert reports, depositions and courtroom testimony in liability cases in national and state jurisdictions, testimony and reports in wrongful death and malpractice actions, and expert consultation in intellectual property matters.
Dr. Langer is Board Certified in Preventive Medicine, a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, a Fellow of the American Heart Association Council on Epidemiology and Prevention, and a member of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology. He is the Principal Scientist and Medical Director of the Jackson Hole Center for Preventive Medicine and a Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego.
Following 7 years in community-based primary care practice, Dr. Langer joined the faculty of Family and Preventive Medicine at at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 1986. In 2005 he became the Founding Director of the Outcomes Research Institute at the Geisinger Health System in central Pennsylvania. Since 2008 he has been the Principal Scientist and Medical Director for the Jackson Hole Center for Preventive Medicine. From 2011 to 2017 he was the Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Research at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) School of Medicine. Upon his retirement from UNR in 2017 he returned his university focus to UCSD where he is an emeritus professor.
Dr. Langer was the Principal Investigator of the UCSD Vanguard Clinical Center for the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) for the entire primary study period from 1993 through 2005, and is a past Chairman of the WHI National Investigators Committee. He was the Founding Principal Investigator for the SELECT trial at UCSD, a National Cancer Institute-sponsored study of prostate cancer prevention for which UCSD was the largest of over 400 sites. At UNR Dr. Langer was the Founding Principal Investigator for the Mountain West Clinical Translational Research – Infrastructure Network, a $20.3 million 5 year grant from the National Institutes of Health launched in 2013 to accelerate research capacity at 13 publicly-funded universities in 7 states covering 1/3 of the US landmass and 4 time zones. From 1989 onward he has been the originating Principal Investigator for more than 30 research studies that have generated over $50 million in extramural funding (unadjusted for inflation).
Dr. Langer was a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Menopause Society from 2018 to 2022 and has been a member the Board of the Foundation for Healthy Aging since 2012. He remains active in research in studies of women’s health, men’s health, major cancers, cardiovascular diseases, osteoporosis, dementias, and longevity, and gives invited lectures both nationally and internationally on these topics.