Jeanne M. Clark

JEANNE M. CLARK, A&S ’88, SPH ’98, is the inaugural recipient of The Frederick Brancati, M.D., M.H.S. Endowed Professorship in Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is a professor of medicine and director of the Division of General Internal Medicine. She holds joint appointments in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a core faculty member of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology, and Clinical Research and a member of the active staff of The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Dr. Clark graduated cum laude with departmental honors in French from The Johns Hopkins University and received her medical degree as Junior AOA and with an Academic Achievement Award from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (UMDNJ-RWJMS). She completed internship and residency training in internal medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where she also served as chief medical resident. Dr. Clark then completed a General Internal Medicine Clinical Research Fellowship at Johns Hopkins, where she obtained a Masters of Public Health degree and was elected into the Delta Omega Honor Society in Public Health. She joined the faculty in general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins in 2000.

The author of more than 100 articles and two book chapters, Dr. Clark has devoted her career to studying the epidemiology and treatment of obesity and its consequences, especially type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. She has been a key investigator in several multi-center, landmark trials including the Diabetes Prevention Program trial (DPP), the Practice-based Opportunities for Weight Reduction trial (POWER), and the Action for Health in Diabetes trial (Look AHEAD). She is currently the principal investigator of a trial at Johns Hopkins to determine the comparative effectiveness and mechanisms of diabetes improvement following weight loss achieved by three methods: lifestyle change, gastric banding surgery, and gastric bypass surgery. In addition to her clinical trial work, she has conducted epidemiologic and translational studies, qualitative studies, systematic reviews, and health services research all aimed at improving our understanding of obesity and its consequences in order to better prevent, diagnose and treat these conditions, and improve the health of individual patients as well as the public. A practicing general internist, Dr. Clark is actively involved in medical education. She developed and continues to run a seminar for medical residents on “Weight Management,” as well as an online obesity module as part of the Johns Hopkins Internet Learning Center, which provides education for more than 600 medical houseofficers in residency programs across the country each year. She co-directs “Obesity Week” for the first-year medical students and continues to serve as Barker Firm Faculty within the Osler Medicine Residency Program. She is author of the chapter on “Obesity” in the textbook Principles of Ambulatory Medicine, 7th ed., and author of two modules within the Johns Hopkins Diabetes Guide (and POC-IT Guide for Diabetes) on “Obesity Management” and “Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis.”

Dr. Clark has served as the research mentor for all levels of learners from undergraduates to masters and PhD students in public health, where she has served as primary advisor and thesis committee member. She has worked closely with postdoctoral fellows in general internal medicine and in gastroenterology and as primary mentor for junior faculty on Career Development Awards. She was proud to direct the General Internal Medicine Clinical Research Fellowship from 2006 through 2011, where she had the opportunity to guide the training of the next generation of academic general internists and maintain it as one of the premier programs for developing leaders in academic medicine and public health. In recognition of her talents as a mentor, she won the Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine David M. Levine Excellence in Mentoring Award in 2009.

A passionate advocate for the advancement of women in medicine, Dr. Clark has been an active member of the Department of Medicine’s Task Force on Women’s Academic Careers in Medicine since she was a fellow. She is honored to have served as chair of the task force since 2008 and to lead a number of new initiatives aimed at addressing inequities in salary, leadership positions, and recognition and improving opportunities for work-life balance. In honor of this work, she is privileged to be a 2012 recipient of the School of Medicine’s Vice Dean’s Award for the Advancement of Women.