“It Isn’t Always Fun.” – Russell Luepker
Joseph Stokes Award,
Society of Preventive Cardiology,
Orlando, FL, March 25,1999
Russell Luepker of Minnesota is a four-striper: investigator, teacher, consultant, and administrator.
He serves well the community of preventive cardiology, maintaining active working collaborations both here and abroad, where he is widely sought for counsel and direction.
With a range of research interests in analytical epidemiology and in trials, he brings special skills and interest to research in school and community programs. He has established these firmly within the purview of rigorous academic pursuits and has made major contributions to their design, methods, and operation. Russell has stood for academic excellence in preventive cardiology while always staying close to practical clinical concerns and preventive care.
With boundless energy he directs at Minnesota a vigorous multi disciplinary center of research, training and service, where he deals well with the vicissitudes and difficult passages of today’s academic life.
With an almost profligate generosity, Russell serves our community effectively, unendingly, as steering committee, task force, and study section member, chair, or consultant.
In a schedule that would crush an ordinary mortal he makes time to advise students, counsel faculty and staff, and even to teach Epi 101, and then to take his family and friends sailing off Bora-Bora or skiing down the Wasatch. He maintains a wide and congenial network, and he and his wife, Ellen, are noted for their hospitality and genuine concern for others. Those who may on rare occasions have heard his growl are never long put off; they know that, inside, Russell is, in fact, a teddy bear.
Russell Luepker is an outstanding leader and diplomat in disease prevention today, befitting the stature and exemplifying the vision of our revered colleague in whose name he is honored here — Joseph Stokes, III.