About

Rachel Whitmer Professor UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences — Professor Rachel Whitmer
Division Chief of Epidemiology
Department of Public Health Sciences
UC Davis School of Medicine

The primary objective of our research program is to identify and understand risk and protective factors for cognitive and brain aging, in particular risk and resilience factors occurring at critical windows over the lifespan. While Alzheimer’s disease and dementia usually becomes clinically apparent in later life, we know that it is a culmination of a lifetime of processes and a lifecourse approach is needed to understand how to reduce risk.

Professor Rachel Whitmer is an epidemiologist with a passion for identifying modifiable risk factors for brain health and dementia in population-based research. She leads a research program funded by the Alzheimer’s Association and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Whitmer is part of the UC Davis Graduate Group Epidemiology, Graduate Group in Public Health Sciences, and is Co-Director of the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center. She is a professor in the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences and Chief of the Division of Epidemiology. Dr. Whitmer is Principal Investigator of the Northern California site for US POINTER the first multidomain behavioral intervention clinical trial to prevent cognitive decline, funded by the Alzheimer’s Association. Dr. Whitmer is committed to mentoring junior scientists and her mentees include Fulbright Fellows, NIH KL-2 and K99 recipients. Her work has been published in JAMA, BMJ, Neurology, Diabetes Care, JAMA: Neurology, and Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia.

Whitmer Lab

The Whitmer lab is a collaboration of UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences, UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, and the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

The goal of our lab is to utilize population science, clinical epidemiology, and intervention studies to understand why some individuals get Alzheimer’s disease and dementia and others do not, and why some individuals not only maintain brain health but have exceptional cognitive aging. The lab focuses on lifecourse contributions to brain health, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease; metabolic and vascular influences on brain aging, and exceptional cognitive longevity.

Lifecourse Epidemiology of Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia

We have conducted significant studies on the role of midlife, modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia using the data resources of Kaiser Permanente Northern California (KPNC) as a natural laboratory for pursuing novel questions in dementia epidemiology with high clinical impact. Our work on obesity, central adiposity, smoking, total cholesterol, depression, cumulative vascular risk and diabetes were the first studies to establish that these risk factors in midlife are strongly associated with increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. These findings, subsequently confirmed in several other data sources, contributed to a fundamental reconceptualization of dementia as a lifecourse disease with major, modifiable risk factors accumulating decades prior to diagnosis. Due to the long subclinical nature of neurodegenerative diseases, there is potential for reverse causality, and risk and protective factors operate differently, at different time points in the lifecourse, and in different populations. This overarching challenge in dementia epidemiology is a continuing, evolving, theme in our work which propels our scientific approaches.

Diabetes and Brain Aging

Another major focus of our group has been on trying to understand how and why those with diabetes have accelerated brain aging and what can be done to change this. While it’s known that those with type 2 diabetes have double the risk of dementia, the driving mechanisms, underpinning pathology, and etiology behind this is not well understood. Our work is examining the timing of glycemic control and vascular complications on brain health. Individuals with type 1 diabetes are living longer than ever before and ways to help this population age successfully are not well understood. Three years ago we commenced the NIH funded SOLID (Study of Longevity in Diabetes), a cohort study of 800 elderly individuals with type 1 diabetes, and 200 with type 2 diabetes with a primary goal of delineating successful mental and physical aging in this population.

Exceptional Aging and Cognitive Longevity

A baby born today has a one in three chance of living to age 90 or beyond; yet very little is known what causes exceptional longevity and how to maintain brain health in the oldest-old.

Our work is focusing on the role of vascular health, mental health, and delineation of the heterogeneity of neuropathology:

We are investigating why some individuals after age 90 not only do not get Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, but have cognitive performance equivalent to a middle aged individual.