Kenneth G. Saag, M.D., M.Sc. is Professor of Medicine and holds the Anna Lois Waters Endowed Chair in the Division and the Department of Medicine.  He became Division Director of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology in July 2020.  His research focuses on comparative effectiveness and safety of therapeutics as well as methods to improve quality of care in gout and osteoporosis.  He is also the Director of the UAB Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, Bone and Autoimmunity Center.  He has been a practicing physician with UAB Medicine and researcher in the UAB School of Medicine since 1998.

Dr. Saag was recently selected as a 2024 EULAR Honorary Member for outstanding service in accomplishing the objectives of EULAR.  He is a past President of the American College of Rheumatology and the National Osteoporosis Foundation Board of Trustees.  He served UAB as Director of the Center for Outcomes, Effectiveness Research and Education (COERE) from 2009 to 2020.  He also directs the Center of Research Translation (CoRT) in Gout and Hyperuricemia, a program supported by the NIH for nearly a decade.  He founded and directed the UAB AHRQ funded Center for Education and Research on Musculoskeletal Disorders.  He has first-authored 3 original articles in the New England Journal of Medicine on the treatment of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis and fracture prevention in women with osteoporosis, as well as over 400 other original articles.  Dr. Saag has been a research mentor, training over 20 post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty as PI of several T32s, a K12, and the KL2 in UAB’s CCTS.
Trained as an engineer at the University of Michigan, he received his M.D. from Northwestern University and the M.Sc. in Epidemiology from the University of Iowa.  As a Medical Resident at Evanston Hospital, he was recognized as Outstanding Intern of the Year and as a Chief Resident.  He completed his fellowship in rheumatology at the University of Iowa where he served as an Assistant Professor before joining the University of Alabama.