David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM is a specialist in Internal Medicine, Preventive Medicine/Public Health, and Lifestyle Medicine, with particular expertise in nutrition.
He earned his BA at Dartmouth College (1984); his MD at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1988); and his MPH from the Yale University School of Public Health (1993). He completed sequential residency training and board certification in Internal Medicine (1991) and Preventive Medicine/Public Health (1993).
Katz is the founder and former director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center (1998-2019) where he secured and managed roughly $40M in research funding; Past President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine; President and Founder of the non-profit True Health Initiative; and Founder and CEO of Diet ID, Inc. He is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine; the American College of Physicians; the American College of Lifestyle Medicine; and Morse College, Yale University.
The recipient of numerous awards for teaching, writing, and contributions to public health, Katz was a 2019 James Beard Foundation Award nominee in health journalism, has been a widely supported nominee for the position of U.S. Surgeon General, and has received three honorary doctorates. He is a 2023 recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Doctors’ World Gala.
Katz has an extensive media portfolio, having served as a nutrition columnist for O, the Oprah Magazine; an on-air contributor for ABC News/Good Morning America; and with appearances on most major news programs and contributions to most major magazines and leading newspapers, including OpEds in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. He is one of the original 150 “Influencers” selected by LinkedIN, and has a social media following of nearly one million.
He holds multiple US patents; has over 200 peer-reviewed publications; has published many hundreds of on-line and newspaper columns; and has authored/co-authored 19 books to date including multiple editions of leading textbooks in nutrition, preventive medicine, and epidemiology. His most recent book for a general audience, How to Eat, co-authored with Mark Bittman, was a 2021 IACP Awards finalist.
His career-long focus has been the translation of science into action for the addition of years to life, and life to years, and on the confluence of human and planetary health.
On the COVID pandemic, he has advocated consistently for a policy of total harm minimization (https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/covid/) by means of risk-stratified interdiction efforts- and for addressing the “prior pandemic” of cardiometabolic disease that contributes so much to acute risk. These views were extensively covered in the New York Times.
Katz has presented at conferences in all 50 U.S. states and in multiple countries on six continents. Represented by the Harry Walker Agency, he has been recognized by peers as the “poet laureate of health promotion.”
He and his wife, Catherine, live in Connecticut. They have five grown children.