Richard Stanley Cooper (born June 7, 1945)[1] is an American cardiologist and epidemiologist who is Chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at Loyola University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine.
[1] Cooper initiated a long-running research program on cardiovascular disease in the African diaspora, involving study sites in Nigeria, Cameroon, St. Lucia, Barbados, Jamaica and metropolitan Chicago.
The project demonstrated the paramount role of social conditions and environmental exposures to risk of hypertension and obesity, providing a new perspective critical of the theory of "genetic susceptibility" among populations of African descent to these conditions that is frequently advocated within the scientific literature in the United States.
Cooper served as Director of a CDC-sponsored training program on prevention of cardiovascular diseases in Africa for 5 years from 2002–2007.
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.