Jeremy D. Kark, MD, MPH, PhD

Born: 1951

Dr. Jeremy Kark earned an MD and an MPH from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1969 and 1974 and a PhD from the University of North Carolina in 1977. He is the son of Sydney Kark who pioneered Community Public Health in apartheid South Africa. He is currently Professor of Epidemiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the School of Public Health and in the School of Social Medicine. He is also Head of the Cardiovascular Unit at the Israeli Center for Disease Control established in 1994. An Israeli epidemiologist who began his work in public health with the Israeli Army, Kark eventually became the head of the Army Public Health Branch. After completing his PhD he became involved in the Jerusalem LRC Study, a longterm longitudinal study assessing role of risk factors in the incidence of coronary heart disease in youth and in the general population.

His research has focused on the following areas:

• Social, behavioral, and genetic risk factors for coronary heart disease with emphasis on these risk factors in the Jewish population of Israel.

• Trends in coronary heart disease incidence, case fatality and medical care.

• Incidence of glucose intolerance and diabetes from adolescence to adulthood.

• Comparative disease rates of ethnic communities from Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Dr. Kark continues work in epidemiology and in 2005 was named Adjunct Affiliate at Stanford University’s Center for Health Policy and Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research. (HB)