JoAnn E. Manson

Chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Michael and Lee Bell Professor of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School. Principal investigator of the Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial (VITAL), a large randomized trial that reshaped the mainstream conversation on cancer, cardiovascular disease and autoimmune outcomes in relation to supplementation.

Why she matters here

Manson’s trial results are the mainstream reference against which this resource’s arguments on vitamin D and omega-3 are constantly measured. The reading of VITAL is contested, and the contest itself is instructive: the same data support opposite policy conclusions depending on whether the intervention is judged against a population-average endpoint or against subgroups defined by baseline status, latitude, and body composition. That contest is central to the argument on reference ranges and dosing.