Lee M. Kaplan is Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Weight Center and the Obesity Research Center at MGH and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the Director of the recently-established Training Program in Obesity Medicine and Nutrition at MGH, Associate Director of the NIH-funded Boston-area Obesity and Nutrition Research Center, and Chairman of the Board of the Washington, DC-based Campaign to End Obesity.

Dr. Kaplan graduated with honors from Harvard University. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, both with distinction, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed an Internship and Residency in Internal Medicine and a Fellowship in Gastroenterology at MGH and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Kaplan’s clinical expertise is in the areas of obesity medicine, as well as gastrointestinal and liver diseases. The author of more than 100 published papers, he has a special interest in the causes and complications of obesity and the development of new and more effective preventive strategies and therapies for this problem. His clinical research is focused on identifying clinically relevant subtypes of obesity and exploring novel, combinatorial approaches to the treatment of obesity and its complications. His laboratory research is focused on the physiological and molecular mechanisms of gastrointestinal regulation of body weight and metabolic function, and his group has developed and used several rodent models of weight loss surgery to explore these issues. Dr. Kaplan has a particular interest in the effects of surgery on type 2 diabetes mellitus. He was a co-director of the Diabetes Surgery Summit held in Rome, Italy in 2007 and is a founding member of the international Diabetes Surgery Task Force.