Jackson T. Wright, Jr., MD, PhD, FACP is Professor of Medicine and Program Director of the General Clinical Research Center at Case Western Reserve University (Case). He is also Director of the Clinical Hypertension Program at Case. Dr. Wright received both his M.D and Ph.D. (Pharmacology) from the University of Pittsburgh and Internal Medicine residency at the University of Michigan. An experienced clinical investigator, Dr. Wright has published extensively (over 240 articles, book chapters, and abstracts) and served on many national and international advisory panels. Among these he served on the National High Blood Education Program Coordinating Committee and co-chaired the treatment section of Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure JNC 7.

His research experience includes having a major or leadership role in nearly all the major clinical outcome trial conducted in Black populations over the past two decades. He served as Vice Chair of the Steering Committee for the NIH-sponsored African American Study of Kidney Disease in Hypertensives Trial and first authored its primary results paper. This trial in 1,100 patients evaluated the best treatment to prevent one of the most common causes of kidney failure in the Black community. In addition, he served as Chair the Executive Committee and Vice Chair of the Steering Committee for the largest study of hypertension treatment ever completed the Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT) where he was the lead author on the primary results paper and the paper presenting the results by race (including > 15K Blacks). He was the PI and is now Co-PI of one of seven clinical centers to participate in the NIDDK sponsored Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort (CRIC) Study. This ongoing multi-ethnic observational trial in individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD) along with the continuing follow-up of the AASK cohort will study the factors associated with progression of kidney and cardiovascular disease in populations with CKD. The latter study will evaluate the factors associated with progression of kidney and cardiovascular disease in a population of aggressively treated hypertensive patients with hypertensive kidney disease. He also served on the data safety and monitoring boards for the DASH and DASH Sodium trials which documented the benefit of diet intervention in preventing hypertension, especially in Black populations, and for the recently completed African American Heart Failure Trial the first study of heart failure treatment in Blacks.