Dr. Gerald S. Berenson, a cardiologist who found that detecting and reducing elevated weight, blood pressure and cholesterol in young children could help prevent heart disease when they became adults, died on Nov. 22 in Houston. He was 96.

Dr. Berenson, who lived in New Orleans, had been visiting a daughter in Texas when he died of a heart attack in his sleep, his son Dr. Leslie Berenson said.

Dr. Berenson was a professor of cardiology at the Louisiana State University Health New Orleans School of Medicine when, in 1972, he initiated what became known as the Bogalusa Heart Study, a four-decade survey that would track 16,000 people from birth to adulthood. He was its principal researcher.

The study resulted in worldwide preventive programs to encourage exercise and lower salt and fat consumption beginning when children are very young. Those measures could ward off or mitigate atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and obesity, the study concluded.