Dr. George Blackburn
At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Blackburn is the first incumbent S. Daniel Abraham Chair, a Professor of Surgery, and the Associate Director of Nutrition in the Division of Nutrition. At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Department of Surgery, he is Chief of the Nutrition/Metabolism Laboratory and Director of the Center for the Study of Nutrition Medicine (CSNM). Dr. Blackburn also serves as Associate Director of the Boston Nutrition Obesity Research Center (BNORC), an NIH-funded research organization that conducts clinical trials in the areas of obesity and nutrition.
At the start of Dr. Blackburn’s academic career at Harvard Medical School, there were no nutrition courses. Students weren’t even taught how to use nutrition medicine to treat malnourished hospital patients. Following Dr. Blackburn’s surgical residency, Dr. William McDermott arranged an NIH fellowship in Nutritional Biochemistry at the Unit of Experimental Medicine, Department of Nutrition and Food Science, School of Science at MIT. This training enabled Dr. Blackburn to develop the first nutrition support service, recruit faculty, and establish nutrition fellowships at Boston City Hospital and The New England Deaconess Hospital—an infrastructure that made it possible to bring nutrition education to Harvard Medical School students. Launching this new field not only required writing textbooks and developing an evidence-based curriculum, but also the founding of professional societies.
For the past 25 years, Dr. Blackburn has been the course director of the Harvard Medical School CME program, International Conference on Practical Approaches to the Treatment of Obesity. He also directed another CME, Enhancing the Safety of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. These positions gave Dr. Blackburn unprecedented opportunities to be at the forefront of translational medicine, scholarship, mentorship, and education in surgical/medical metabolism and obesity medicine and research.
Among other accomplishments, Dr. Blackburn pioneered the practice of nutrition support; performed the first Roux-en-Y procedure in New England; spearheaded best practice standards for weight loss surgery; designed lifestyle interventions for NIH-funded trials; and developed new methodologies, applications, techniques, and technologies in the fields of surgical malnutrition, breast cancer research, nutrition medicine, surgical metabolism, and weight loss surgery.
Dr. Blackburn’s research spans the full range of scientific endeavors on healthy living and the prevention and treatment of overweight and obesity and their related comorbidities. It includes the role of fatty acids and proteins on energy biochemistry, the nutrient effects of bioactive components on cellular and molecular function, and the metabolic correlates of weight loss following surgical treatment of obesity. Multidisciplinary collaborations and the dissemination of best practices in both surgical and nonsurgical interventions for the treatment of obesity and obesity-related diseases are ongoing priorities for Dr. Blackburn, as are two novel collaborations that bring together neurocognitive science and the science of exercise and eating behavior.
Currently, Dr. Blackburn is studying the neurocognitive correlates of diet and physical activity patterns in lean and obese subjects with the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation. This is leading-edge research—the first to demonstrate a link between variations in healthy eating, brain structure, and cognitive processes. Initial findings suggest the need for novel and specific neurocognitive resources to translate nutrition advice into healthy dietary behaviors at the individual level.
In summary, Dr. Blackburn’s work involves basic, clinical, and translational research in areas of critical importance to public health. It has resulted in over 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals, many review articles, over 100 textbook chapters, multiple patents, and a mass market book published by Harper Collins in 2007. It has also led to an array of prestigious awards. More importantly, it has a direct impact on patient safety and quality of care across a wide range of disciplines. It shapes public policy, produces evidence-based guidelines, and propagates their application in clinical practice throughout the United States and around the world.