Eric Larson, clinical professor of medicine at the UW and director of the Center for Health Studies at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, is the new chair of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians (ACP).

Larson, also an adjunct professor of health services, was medical director of UW Medical Center and associate dean in the School of Medicine from 1989 to 2002.

For the next year, he will head the policy-making body of the ACP, the national organization of doctors of internal medicine and the second-largest physician group in the country. He will preside over the board and its executive committee, and will serve on other major ACP committees, including finance, membership, education, and health and public policy.

Larson has served on the ACP board since 1998, and became chair elect in April 2003. In 2002, he started in his position at Group Health, where he leads an institute conducting epidemiologic, health services, and clinical studies on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of major health problems.

Earlier this month, Larson and his colleagues at the Center for Health Studies and the UW published the results of a study on the longevity of patients with Alzheimer's disease. People with Alzheimer's disease survive about half as long as others their age, the researchers found, and severity of the disease and other medical conditions were better predictors of length of survival than social factors.

The results of the study appeared in the April 6 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.