Mark D. Huffman, MD, MPH, tenured Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the DOM Global Health Center, has been appointed as the inaugural William Bowen Endowed Professor. The appointment recognizes Dr. Huffman’s outstanding leadership in preventive cardiology and cardiovascular health research at an individual and population level, and at a global scale. His research program seeks to improve global cardiovascular health and health care across the spectrum of disease prevention, and implement evidence-based interventions into routine practice and policy.
Some of his major scientific contributions that have affected practice and policy include: 1) developing and testing new combination therapies for the treatment of high blood pressure in federally qualified health centers in Chicago and for the treatment of heart failure in South Asia; 2) leading the largest cardiovascular randomized trial conducted in India to improve the quality of heart attack care in the south Indian state of Kerala in collaboration with the Centre for Chronic Disease Control and Cardiological Society of India; 3) leading one of the largest and most successful hypertension control programs in Africa in collaboration with University of Abuja; 4) synthesizing the effects of evidence-based interventions to inform clinical practice guidelines and global health policy, ranging from surgical strategies to treat atrial fibrillation for the European Society of Cardiology for the 2016 European guidelines to polypills for the prevention of heart attacks and strokes, which were added to the World Health Organization’s Model List of Essential Medicines in 2023; 5) estimating the long-term, or lifetime, risks for heart failure in diverse populations in the United States; and 6) synthesizing evidence on polypills for global cardiovascular disease prevention and control.
Congratulations on this achievement and recognition!