Mitchell Gail Retires from the NIH

September 2, 2025, by Jennifer K. Loukissas, M.P.P.

Mitchell H. Gail, M.D., Ph.D., senior investigator and NIH Distinguished Investigator in the Biostatistics Branch (BB), retired from the NIH in August 2025 after more than 56 years of service.  

Dr. Gail made seminal contributions to the development of statistical methods and their application to epidemiology and clinical medicine, particularly those for risk prediction, genetic epidemiology, and the design, execution, and analysis of cancer treatment and prevention trials.

Most notably, he developed the NCI Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool (BCRAT), widely known as the Gail Model, the first to estimate a woman's five-year and lifetime risk of developing invasive breast cancer using individual risk factors; an average of 50,000 users access the tool each month. Though he developed BCRAT to help clinical trialists identify women at elevated risk for inclusion in chemoprevention trials, today it is used in counseling women across the country on their risk of breast cancer and to determine optimal screening intervals and modalities. BCRAT has been adapted and translated for populations around the world.  

In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Dr. Gail and Dr. Ronald Brookmeyer, a visitor from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, used “back-calculation” to estimate the size of the epidemic. Their conclusions provided critical insights into the future public health implications of HIV and AIDS and informed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the evolution of the crisis. Philip Rosenberg, Ph.D., (retired) also a senior investigator in BB, extended these ideas in applications to the local epidemic.

Throughout his career, Dr. Gail supported DCEG studies on cancer etiology. For the Shandong Intervention Trial, he and colleagues collaborated with the Beijing Institute of Cancer Research in China, to explore the potential of three treatments to reduce gastric cancer incidence in a region with very high rates. They tested a two-week treatment for Helicobacter pylori or seven years' treatment with either garlic or Vitamin E, Vitamin C, and selenium supplementation. Surprisingly, all three reduced gastric cancer incidence and mortality, though the benefits of both supplementation interventions were only confirmed after 22 years of follow-up.

Dr. Gail is the author of over 400 scientific publications and several books, including AIDS Epidemiology: A Quantitative Approach with Dr. Brookmeyer, which summarized methods for surveillance of HIV and clinical management, and Absolute Risk: Methods and Applications in Clinical Management and Public Health, with Ruth Pfeiffer, Ph.D., senior investigator in BB, which addressed critical challenges and solutions.  

For over half a century, Dr. Gail mentored dozens of fellows and junior faculty. In 2023, he was recognized with the DCEG Mentoring Award, inscribed, “Mitchell Gail, an internationally recognized expert, is humble and approachable, wise and funny. He continuously acknowledges my successes and contributions, helps me to appreciate my accomplishments, and encourages me to present my work, which builds my confidence and improves my communication skills. He is always available to give feedback and advice. I feel incredibly grateful to have him as my mentor."

He has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Spiegelman Gold Medal for Health Statistics, the Snedecor Award for applied statistical research, the Howard Temin Award for AIDS Research, an NIH Director's Award, Public Health Service Distinguished Service Medal, Nathan Mantel Lifetime Achievement Award, Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science, and the American Association for Cancer Research - American Cancer Society Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention. Dr. Gail served as chair-elect of the section on statistics at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was selected to deliver the prestigious NIH Robert S. Gordon, Jr., Lecture in Epidemiology.  

Dr. Gail is a fellow and former president of the American Statistical Association, a Fellow of the AAAS, and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, Boston, M.A., in 1968 and a Ph.D. in statistics from George Washington University, Washington, D.C., in 1977. In 1969, Dr. Gail joined the NCI as part of the Public Health Service, from which he retired in 1999 with the rank of captain. From 1994 to 2008, he served as director the Biostatistics Branch.