Dr. Eric Larson is a distinguished physician-scientist and national leader in aging research and dementia prevention. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute and Vice President for Research and Health Care Innovation at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington while maintaining his clinical professorship in Medicine at the University of Washington. After earning his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1973 and completing residency at Beth Israel Hospital, he built a distinguished career at the University of Washington where he served as medical director of UW Medical Center and associate dean for clinical affairs from 1989 to 2002. Throughout his career, Dr. Larson has maintained a small internal medicine practice, ensuring his research remains grounded in clinical realities and patient needs.
Dr. Larson's groundbreaking work on cognitive aging is epitomized by the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study, which he co-founded in 1986 and has led for over three decades. This longitudinal study has followed more than 5,000 community-dwelling participants age 65 and older, creating one of the world's most comprehensive datasets linking medical, lifestyle, genetic, and neuropathological information to cognitive outcomes. Among his seminal findings, Dr. Larson demonstrated that dementia risk is tied to blood sugar levels even in the absence of diabetes, fundamentally changing understanding of metabolic influences on brain health. His research has established critical links between environmental factors like air pollution and brain injury with increased dementia risk while his work with the eMERGE project has advanced genomic approaches to personalized dementia prevention strategies.
Beyond his research contributions, Dr. Larson has profoundly shaped the field through leadership roles including his presidency of the Society of General Internal Medicine and service on The Joint Commission from 1999 to 2010. As an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2007 and Master of the American College of Physicians, he has influenced national health policy and research priorities for aging populations. Dr. Larson co-founded and helps lead the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory, which transforms how clinical trials are conducted to generate real-world evidence for patient care decisions. Currently, he continues to drive innovation in dementia prevention through community-based interventions and serves as executive co-producer of the public television series The Art of Aging, translating scientific findings into practical guidance for maintaining cognitive health throughout the lifespan.
