History of the Georgia Prevention Institute

The Georgia Prevention InstituteGPI was founded over three decades ago by two pioneers, a Pediatric Cardiologist (Dr. William B. Strong) and an educator (Dr. Maurice Levy) to fill a void in education and research in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention across the lifespan. The GPI had very humble beginnings, building from the “grass roots” up. The GPI was first allocated space in 1985, when Drs' Strong, Levy and Frank Treiber (the first full-time faculty member and later Director) received the GPI's first grant from the institute's first National Institutes of Health grant to study the relationship of childhood diet and exercise to future heart disease.

Since then, the GPI has grown to include 10 faculty members and has received well in excess of 100 million dollars in grant funding, including the longest active Program Project grant at Augusta University. The breadth of our research has also grown to include the study of diabetes, kidney disease, and lung disease.