Dr Psaty is the principal investigator on several large epidemiologic studies and has had major roles as a cardiovascular disease epidemiologist at the coordinating centers of NIH-funded multi-center studies, including the Cardiovascular Health Study and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. With Russ Tracy from the University of Vermont, he is the PI of an NHLBI-funded case-cohort study to evaluate the association of the densities of innate and adaptive immune cells with the incidence of myocardial infarction and coronary disease. In these settings and others, he has used case-control, cohort, case-cohort, clinical-trial and meta-analytic methods to evaluate a variety of risk factors, including the risks and benefits of medications such as hormone therapy, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, and drugs used to treat hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, asthma, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, osteoporosis, chronic pain, and other conditions as well as drug-gene interactions that may influence the risk-benefit profile of selected medications. Recently, Dr Psaty collaborated with investigators from other national and international cohort studies to establish the CHARGE (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology) consortium, which has published more than 250 meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies of a variety of phenotypes.
Dr Psaty has served on various working groups, data-safety monitoring committees, review groups and study sections, including as chair of the NIH Cardiovascular Disease and Sleep Epidemiology Study Section (2004-2006), Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Assessment of the US Drug Safety System (2005-2006), the Executive Committee of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s Strategic Planning Effort (2006-2007), the Scientific Advisory Board of the Netherlands Biobank Infrastructure (2010-2013), and the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Ethical and Scientific Issues in Studying the Safety of Approved Drugs (2010-12). In 2005, he received the University of Washington Outstanding Public Service Award for his work on drug safety. The American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention Council selected Dr Psaty as the Remington Methodology Lecturer (2004) and as the Ancel Keys Memorial Lecturer (2009). Elected memberships include American Epidemiological Society, Association of American Physicians, the Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine, and fellow of the American Heart Association. In 2013, the American Heart Association designated Dr Psaty a Distinguished Scientist. Currently, Dr Psaty is currently chair of the US Food and Drug Administration Science Board, a member of the Safety Science Committee of the FDA’s Mini-Sentinel Initiative, and a member of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Advisory Council. He also teaches and mentors students, fellows and junior faculty in medicine and epidemiology. With more than 760 articles, editorials and commentaries in the medical literature, Dr Psaty publishes regularly, serves on the editorial board of several journals, and is a contributing writer at JAMA.
