K.M. Venkat Narayan
K.M.Venkat Narayan, MD, MPH, MBA is Hubert Professor of Global Health, and Professor of Medicine & Epidemiology at Emory University, Atlanta.
Formerly, Chief of the Diabetes Epidemiology & Statistics Branch, Division of Diabetes Translation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Narayan is a product of three continents, and has a richly diverse background. He earned his medical degree from St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore, India in 1980. He did post-graduate training in medicine and geriatrics in England, and in preventive medicine in Scotland & USA, and is certified in all three specialties. He obtained a masters’ degree in public health and also a masters’ degree in business administration from Edinburgh, Scotland.
He was a Consultant/Clinical Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at Aberdeen, Scotland and was a Senior Research Fellow at Phoenix Epidemiology and Clinical Research Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIDDK, NIH) from 1992 to 1996. Dr. Narayan developed and led the first lifestyle intervention study in the Pima Indian population, and was actively involved in the planning and design of the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP). Dr. Narayan joined CDC in 1996 as Chief of the Diabetes Epidemiology Section. He has played a major role in shaping CDC’s research efforts in diabetes, leading a diverse team of over 50 physicians and scientists. His notable contributions at CDC include the introduction of the tradition of large, multi-center investigations; the publication of seminal papers on the lifetime risk of diabetes, future projections of diabetes burden; development of cost-effectiveness models; and the initiation of the largest diabetes outcomes cohort study (TRIAD) of 12,500 patients, and of a multi-center study of childhood diabetes (SEARCH) among over 5000 prevalent and 2400 incident cases of diabetes. He is an investigator and a member of the ACCORD study, a NHLBI-funded multi-center trial testing the effects of intensive glycemic, blood pressure, and lipid control on cardiovascular disease among 10,000 patients with diabetes.
His current and previous scientific interest encompasses epidemiology of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, road traffic accidents, smoking; prevention of diabetes and cardiovascular disease; quality of care, health care delivery and structure; and global health. He has authored/coauthored more than 190 peer-reviewed publications, including invited textbook chapters and several editorials. His editorial activities have included appointment as Associate Editor, Primary Care Diabetes; Associate Editor, Clinical Diabetes; Section Editor, Diabetes Therapeutics & Technology; Guest Editor, Annals of Internal Medicine; Guest Editor, Journal of Public Health Management and Practice; and Editorial Board, Canadian Diabetes Journal.
Dr. Narayan is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians; a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland; and a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of the U.K. Dr. Narayan participated in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Fellowship Conference, an intensive 3-week leadership development program, in 1992. He was invited by the Secretary of Air Force, U.S.A. to be a member of the National Security Forum at the Maxwell Air College in 2002. He participated in a year long CDC Leadership and Management Institute course (LMI), and was on the Research Board of ICA (India, China, America) Institute, a non-profit research & policy think-tank based in Atlanta.