Professor of Public Health Sciences and Neurology, Chief of the Division of Epidemiology, Co-Director of the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center
University of California Davis (UC Davis) School of Medicine
Rachel Whitmer is a tenured Professor of Public Health Sciences and Neurology, Chief of the Division of Epidemiology at the University of California Davis (UC Davis) School of Medicine and Co-Director of the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center which has a mission of a lifetime of brain health for all. Dr. Whitmer is Director of the Population Brain Health Lab (https://rachelwhitmer.ucdavis.edu) using lifecourse epidemiological
and clinical translational methods to reduce inequities in brain aging; through study of dementia incidence, cognitive aging, and brain pathology in diverse racial/ethnic groups, those with diabetes, and the oldest-old.
Her work has been cited over 23,000 times and she is ranked in the top .05% for Dementia Science. Prof. Whitmer is Principal Investigator of several National Institutes of Health funded cohort studies of dementia, cardiovascular health, and cognitive aging, recruiting and following over 5000 research participants, as well as US POINTER, a lifestyle multi-domain behavioral intervention clinical trial. Prior to joining UC Davis, Dr. Whitmer was a Senior Scientist and Director of the Population Cognitive Aging Lab at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research for 18 years where still holds an adjunct appointment. In her work leveraging electronic medical records for prediction models, she created the first 10-year diabetes-specific risk score for dementia, validated the CAIDE dementia risk score, and was among the first to identify midlife obesity/overweight, hyperlipidemia, smoking, and hypertension as long-term risk factors for cognitive impairment and dementia
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Keynote Multidomain Lifestyle Interventions: A New Era in Vascular Dementia Prevention
Thursday, October 15, 2026
10:00 AM - 10:45 AM EDT