Douglas C. Heimburger, MD, MS

Dr. Heimburger is Professor of Medicine and Associate Director for Education and Training in the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH). He directs VIGH’s education and training programs for Vanderbilt students and trainees, as well as research training opportunities for doctoral and postdoctoral trainees from other institutions and other countries.  These include direction of the Global Health Track in Vanderbilt’s Master of Public Health Program and co-direction of the Vanderbilt-Zambia Network for Innovation in Global Health Technologies, the Vanderbilt-Emory-Cornell-Duke Consortium for Global Health Fellows, the Vanderbilt-CIDRZ AIDS International Training and Research Program, the Vanderbilt Training Program in Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology of Cancer (MAGEC), and curriculum development for the University of Guyana Master of Public Health Program. His principal research and publication interests are nutritional influences on responses to treatment for HIV/AIDS in developing countries and global health education. He conducts clinical nutrition research in a population of undernourished Zambians starting antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS, initiated during a Fulbright Scholar Award-supported sabbatical in Zambia in 2006.

Dr. Heimburger received his M.D. degree from Vanderbilt University in 1978, internal medicine residency at St. Louis University, and clinical nutrition fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He is board-certified in internal medicine and clinical nutrition.  From 1982 to 2009, he served on the faculty of the Departments of Nutrition Sciences and Medicine at UAB, where his titles included Senior Scientist in the UAB Clinical Nutrition Research Center, Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Center for AIDS Research; Associate Director of the Sparkman Center for Global Health; and Director of the NIH-funded Cancer Prevention and Control Training Program and the Clinical Nutrition Fellowship Program. Under his leadership the CPCTP facilitated the training of approximately 140 pre- and post-doctoral students and fellows, to increase the pool of chronic disease specialists committed to cancer prevention and control.