Dr. William Cushman is Medical Director, Department of Preventive Medicine, and Professor of Preventive Medicine, Medicine, and Physiology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) in Memphis, TN. 

Dr. Cushman graduated magna cum laude from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in Jackson, MS, in 1974 and completed his Medicine residency training there in 1977. He served on the faculty at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in the Department of Medicine and was on the medical staff at the Veteran Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Jackson from 1977-1988, then moved to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and the VA Medical Center in Memphis, TN. He retired from the VA in 2020 and took his current position at UTHSC. 

He was on the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Joint National Committee (JNC) 7 and 8 U.S. hypertension guideline executive committees and was VA champion for the 2014 and 2020 VA/DoD Hypertension Clinical Practice Guideline committees. He has been an investigator and/or on the leadership for many clinical trials in hypertension, diabetes, and lipid therapy, including many VA Cooperative Studies, NHLBI trials (e.g., ALLHAT, ACCORD, and SPRINT), and industry trials. He was co-chair of the Diuretic Comparison Project (DCP), a pragmatic randomized VA Cooperative Study comparing major cardiovascular events with chlorthalidone vs hydrochlorothiazide. He has received more than $60 million in research grant funding, has 385 journal article and book chapter publications, and has received several awards, including the 2010 VA Clinical Science Research and Development Barnwell Award, the 2017 Inter-American Society of Hypertension Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2018 American Heart Association’s Council on Hypertension Irvine Page-Alva Bradley Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2024 American College of Physicians Mastership and Laureate Awards.