Richard Edwin Pratley MD

Dr. Richard Pratley serves as the Samuel E. Crockett Chair in Diabetes Research, Senior Investigator and Diabetes Program Lead at the AdventHealth Translational Research Institute, and Medical Director at the AdventHealth Diabetes Institute, in Orlando, Florida.  He is also an Adjunct Professor of Medicine with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Pratley served as Head of the Diabetes and Metabolism Unit of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Diabetes and Nutrition Section in Phoenix, Arizona.  He then took a position as Senior Director in the Cardiovascular and Metabolism Therapeutic Area at Novartis Pharmaceuticals where he led cardiovascular outcome trials and the clinical development of new drugs for diabetes.  From 2004 to 2011, Dr. Pratley was the Director of the University of Vermont’s Diabetes and Metabolism Translational Medicine Unit and a Professor at the College of Medicine.  There he led many clinical and basic studies, including NIH and pharmaceutical company-sponsored trials.

As a member of the American Diabetes Association, the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, and The Obesity Society, Dr. Pratley continues his active involvement in the professional community.  The Henry Christian Award for Excellence in Clinical Research from the American Federation for Clinical Research Foundation was awarded in recognition of his work.  Dr. Pratley regularly presents at national and international meetings, has written over 290 peer-reviewed articles, and is a Principal Investigator for both NIH and pharmaceutical company-sponsored trials in diabetes and obesity.  He is on the editorial board for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism, and has served as a member of the editorial boards of Diabetes Care, The Lancet: Diabetes and Endocrinology, The Journal of Diabetes and its Complications, and The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, and acts as an ad hoc reviewer for many other journals.

Dr. Pratley is a graduate of Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan, and trained in internal medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  He completed Fellowship training in geriatrics and gerontology at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland.  His current research interests include the prevention of diabetes, improving the care for older persons with diabetes, developing new drugs to treat and prevent diabetes and its complications, and understanding the role of the fat cell in increasing the risk of diabetes and heart disease.