Richard S. Cooper

Richard Stanley Cooper (born June 7, 1945)

Early life and education Cooper was born on June 7, 1945, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Growing up in Arkansas, he often witnessed racial discrimination against African Americans, and this later inspired him to research racial disparities in health. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1967, and the University of Arkansas Medical School, from which he received his M.D. in 1971. He completed training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at Montefiore Hospital Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx from 1971 to 1975, and subsequently received training in epidemiology, nutrition and preventive cardiology on an NIH Fellowship at Northwestern University. He received an NIH MERIT award in 1998 for research in the African diaspora, and served as a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Human Genome Research Institute from 2008 to 2011. He has written widely on the concept of race, and its implications for health inequities and medical care. Recent publications have described both strengths and potential limitations of the application of genomic technology and the concept of "Precision Medicine" to prevention and treatment of common disease.