Professor Daniel Levy, the Director of the Framingham Heart Study, visits TAU

On December 27, 2015, the TAU Faculty of Medicine and the School of Public Health, were delighted to host Professor Daniel Levy, Director of the Framingham Heart Study at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Prof. Levy's visit was made possible by Saul J. Farber, Distinguished Lectures in Medicine (endowed by the Sackler Foundation) and by the initiative of Prof. Uri Goldbourt, a lifetime correspondent and colleague of the Framingham investigators.

Daniel Levy, MD, joined the Framingham Heart Study in 1984 after completing his cardiology fellowship at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Levy has published over 200 articles in leading medical journals, and edited a book on the Framingham Heart Study titled 50 Years of Discovery. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Society of Hypertension and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Hypertension and the American Journal of Medicine.

In addition to his research and administrative responsibilities, Dr. Levy has become actively involved as a policy maker. He served with the National High Blood Pressure Education Program and the National Cholesterol Education Program in the formulation of national hypertension and cholesterol guidelines. Dr. Levy has been the recipient of many awards including the National Institutes of Health Director's Award given for his research achievements at the Framingham Heart Study. His main areas of research interest include the epidemiology and genetics of hypertension, heart disease and heart failure.

During his visit to TAU, Prof. Levy lectured on "Epidemiology of hypertension: from observational studies to clinical trials". In this presentation, Prof. Levy examined the latest evidence on the treatment of hypertension in different populations. His talk highlighted the recent controversy that divides the field of hypertension, following the recent report of SPRINT, the NIH initiated clinical trial of antihypertensive pharmacotherapy that focused on standard versus more strict systolic blood pressure goals, and the implication for health policy emerging from those findings.