Richard Cooper, MD, is the ITM’s Loyola University Affiliate Leader. Richard is the director of the ITM’s Learning Healthcare System Cluster, where he oversees the development and dissemination of ITM’s healthcare design and delivery resources. As a professor of medicine and cardiology and chairman of the Department of Public Health Sciences at Loyola, Richard’s research focuses on the evolution of cardiovascular disease over the course of the African diaspora, genetic epidemiology and the development of hypertension and obesity, and the relationship between genetics and race.

His work has made him an advocate for incorporating a social understanding of race into genetic research, and his work related to the topic has been widely published. Cooper is a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on issues related to controlling cardiovascular disease in developing countries, and has served as a member of the National Advisory Council of the National Human Genome Research Institute.