University hosts world-renowned physician Dr. David Barker Feb. 21
George Fox and Providence Newberg Medical Center will host a public health forum featuring Dr. David Barker – a physician and researcher who discovered the relationship between birth weight and the risk of coronary heart disease – from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21, in Wood-Mar Auditorium.
Barker, a physician and professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Southampton in England and a professor in the Department of Medicine and the Heart Research Center at Oregon Health and Science University, will speak on “Halting the Epidemic of Diabetes and Heart Disease.â€
The forum is free and open to the public. In addition to seating in Wood-Mar Auditorium, a live feed of the presentation will be available in Hoover 105.
Barker, MD, PhD, is internationally renowned for what was named the “Barker Hypothesis†by the British Medical Journal in 1995. In 1989, with University of Southampton colleagues, he showed for the first time that people who had low birth weight are at greater risk of developing coronary heart disease. His theory is now widely accepted in the medical community.
ater studies he conducted showed that low birth weight also is associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes. In all, Barker has published more than 200 papers and written or edited five books about the developmental origins of chronic disease.
His Oregon connection began in 2003, when he joined the faculty at the Heart Research Center at OHSU to study how nutrition and growth before birth and during early childhood alter the development of the heart. He is a research partner with Dr. Kent Thornburg, a member of the George Fox Board of Trustees and a 1967 George Fox graduate. Thornburg helped arrange the forum.
For more information, contact Sharon Pilon (Development) at 503-554-2115, or Mike Antrim, senior public affairs and marketing coordinator at Providence Newberg Medical Center, at 503-537-1699.