A message from the Director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center
Welcome to the website of SPRC. Our Center has a long tradition of excellence that spans a history of almost half a century. We want to continue and strengthen this tradition with the adoption of new expertise, research methods, cutting-edge technologies, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Fields where SPRC already has strength and would like to grow further include, but are not limited to, intervention research, chronic disease prevention, global health, delivery of preventive services, health promotion, behavior change , physical activity, energy balance, obesity, aging, women's health, tobacco control, workplace health, community medicine, correction of health inequalities, genomics and personalized health, evidence-based medicine, research synthesis, empirical evaluation of biases in biomedical research, sociology of science, and translational research with population impact.
Investigators currently affiliated with SPRC have authored or coauthored many high-impact scientific articles that have made their mark in biomedicine and health care, including the most highly cited original non-methods/non-review paper across the whole scientific literature in the period 2002-2010 and the most highly downloaded article in the history of the open access scientific literature. The Center sponsors a weekly Seminar Lecture Series and weekly Research in Progress Brainstorming sessions where the emphasis is on presenting and discussing new research ideas, improving ongoing research efforts, and maximizing fruitful interaction between SPRC members and outside collaborators.
The Center has a rich tradition of teaching and training undergraduates, doctoral/graduate students, medical students, and post-docs, including the post-doctoral fellows supported by our NIH-sponsored fellowship program. Our aim is to help our fellows become accomplished, independent investigators. SPRC faculty gives also numerous invited lectures at other divisions, departments and schools at Stanford, and high profile lectures nationally and internationally.
Finally, we are proud to serve the Stanford community through initiatives such as our Health Improvement Program and BeWell. The Center is strongly committed to community outreach and engagement and to moving research from the lab to the community at-large.
As Director of SPRC, I feel inspired by the commitment to excellence of our faculty, trainees, students, and staff. I am most thankful for having the opportunity to learn from my interaction with our multidisciplinary team and our many talented collaborators on campus and worldwide.
John P.A. Ioannidis, MD, DSc