Kenneth M. Langa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kenneth M. Langa is an American physician and social scientist known for his work on aging,[1] cognitive decline,[2] and dementia.[3][4] He is the A. Regula Herzog Distinguished University Professor of Internal Medicine and Survey Research at the University of Michigan and an investigator in longitudinal studies of health and retirement in aging populations.[5]
In 2024, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.[6]
Langa grew up in New Jersey and completed his undergraduate education at Amherst College, graduating summa cum laude with a BA in sociology in 1985. During this time, he was a visiting undergraduate at Harvard University.[6] He pursued clinical and academic training at the University of Chicago as a Fellow in the Pew Program for Medicine, Arts and the Social Sciences, earning a PhD in Public Policy in 1992 and an MD in 1994.[7][8]
Academic career
During his MD–PhD training, Langa studied the impact of US cost-containment policies on the healthcare provided to those in poverty, publishing his first research article on this topic in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993.[9]
In 1994, he moved to the University of Michigan for an internal medicine residency and later completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. In 1997, he reconnected with Robert J. Willis, his dissertation advisor at the University of Chicago, who had moved to the University of Michigan to become the principal investigator of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).[10]
Langa joined the University of Michigan faculty in 1999 and progressed from assistant professor to tenured professor.[11] He currently holds joint appointments in the Medical School and the Institute for Social Research, and serves as co-director of the Health and Retirement Study, and co-director of the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) international network.[12]
Langa has been a visiting professor at institutions including the University of Cambridge, the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and the University of Otago in Dunedin.[13]