Adjunct Associate Professor of Nutrition, Department of Nutrition, T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Stephen Devries, MD is a preventive cardiologist and Adjunct Associate Professor of Nutrition in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Dr. Devries teaches the HSPH course, Integrating Nutrition into Clinical Practice: The Role of Health Professionals as Change Agents, that includes students from both the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Devries also lectures on nutrition to Harvard Medical students in the Health Sciences & Technology Track.
Dr. Devries is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Gaples Institute, an educational nonprofit with the mission of advancing the role of nutrition and lifestyle in medical education and practice.
In his primary role as Executive Director of the Gaples Institute, Dr. Devries is the course director for a condensed online nutrition course for health professionals that was recognized by the 2024 White House. The Gaples Institute nutrition course is now required in the curriculum of 9 medical schools, including Harvard Medical School. The course is also widely used in graduate medical education as well as by practicing clinicians. To date, the Gaples Institute nutrition course has been taken by over 9,000 health professional trainees and practicing clinicians.
Dr. Devries is the co-leader, along with Dr. Walter Willett, of the Nutrition Education Working Group, which meets at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for the purpose of exploring ways to strengthen nutrition education in all levels of medical training. To date, the group has successfully impacted nutrition content on board exams as well as provided background information that helped lead to the adoption of a U.S. House Resolution highlighting the urgent need to address the current deficiency of nutrition education in medical training.
Dr. Devries has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles on nutrition education in medicine and has written the chapter on integrative cardiology for the last four editions of Braunwald's Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine. He also co-edited the Oxford University textbook Integrative Cardiology.
Dr. Devries has lectured on nutrition and lifestyle in medical care in venues from Thailand to the Royal Society of Medicine in London, and his work has been featured on PBS and NPR.