Craig Willcox, MHSC, PhD

Dr. Willcox is Professor of Public Health and Gerontology at Okinawa International University and adjunct Professor in the Department of Geriatric Medicine at University of Hawaii. He also serves as Co-Principal Investigator of the Okinawa Centenarian Study as well as a co-investigator for several cohort studies of healthy aging from the Kuakini Honolulu Heart Program. Dr. Willcox is a fluent speaker of Japanese and has over 30 years of epidemiological research on Asian populations. His work has mainly focused upon identifying genetic and lifestyle risk factors for longevity and includes caloric restriction and cardio-metabolic risk factor analyses, gene-environment interactions, epigenetics as well as dietary intervention studies. He has published extensively on the traditional Okinawan diet and its relationship to healthy aging and longevity. Dr. Willcox also contributes as Associate Editor to several journals devoted to research on aging, such as Journals of Gerontology:Biological and Medical Sciences, Nutrition and Aging, and the recently established Nature partner journal npj Mechanisms of Aging and Disease. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and has several nominations for Who`s Who in Healthcare and Medicine. He has also co-authored two best-selling books (The Okinawa Program and The Okinawa Diet Plan) on dietary and lifestyle approaches for healthy aging that translate his research findings into practical public health programs. The Okinawa Program was a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for “Best Wellness Book of the Year” by “Books for a Better Life” and was an Amazon.com “Top Fifty Book of the Year”.