Evan Dale Abel, a pioneering endocrinologist, and advocate for more Black men being accepted into medical school, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on February 4, 1963. His father and mother were educators and parents of five children; three of whom today are doctors, and two are engineers.
Abel would later become the Chair and Department Executive Officer of the Department of Internal Medicine, Director of the Division of Endocrinology & Metabolism in the Department of Internal Medicine, and Director of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center (FOEDRC) at the University of Iowa. He would also later hold the John B. Stokes III Chair in Diabetes Research and the François M. Abboud Chair in Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa.
Evan Abel graduated from Wolmer’s High School for Boys in Kingston and received Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees from the University of the West Indies. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Medicine from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. His residency training at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he served as Chief Medical Resident. Abel also served on the faculty of Harvard University.
1995 marked the beginning of the funding partnership of Abel’s medical research programs with the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
In 2000, Abel was recruited to the University of Utah as an Assistant Professor. Within three years, he received the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Medicine and Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes. In 2007, Abel was appointed as Chief of Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes at the University of Utah, and in 2008, he also received Professor status in Medicine and Biochemistry.
In 2012, Abel was the Principal Investigator of the Future Leaders Advancing Research in Endocrinology (FLARE) program through the Endocrine Society. One year later he moved to the University of Iowa to serve as the Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism in the Department of Internal Medicine and the Director of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center (FOEDRC).
In 2022, Abel became the William S. Adams Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Chair, and Executive Medical Director of the Department of Medicine in the David Geffen School of Medicine and the University of California at Los Angeles Health.
Dr. Evan Dale Abel, married to Carla Abel, is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American Heart Association. He served as president of the Society for Heart and Vascular Metabolism. In addition, he has been a member of the Council of the Endocrine Society and the Board of Directors of Keystone Symposia.
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“Endocrinologist, mentor appointed UCLA Department of Medicine chair,” https://www.uclahealth.org/news/endocrinologist-mentor-appointed-ucla-department-medicine;
“Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center,” https://medicine.uiowa.edu/diabetes/abel;
“Ready, Willing and Abel,”https://www.uclahealth.org/u-magazine/ready-willing-and-abel.
