Faxon leads American Heart Association

David Faxon, Section Chief of Cardiology and Professor of Medicine, began a one-year term Sunday, July 1, as president of the American Heart Association.

With more than four million volunteers and a budget of nearly half a billion dollars, the AHA is the largest not-for-profit, voluntary health organization targeting such cardiovascular diseases as heart disease and stroke, two of the leading killers in the United States.

A pioneer in the development of non-surgical techniques, including angioplasty for restoring blood flow through clogged coronary arteries, Faxon was elected in June 2000 and confirmed at the annual Delegate Assembly in Dallas last month.

“It is a considerable honor to represent such a distinguished organization and to have this chance to play a leading role in AHA’s campaign to reduce death and risk of heart disease and stroke by 25 percent by the year 2010,” said Faxon.

“The Heart Association has already made a huge difference through public education about risk factors, prevention, early detection and the need for rapid response to a heart attack or stroke, but we still have a long way to go.”

Faxon, 56, is a leader in the development of interventional cardiology. He is best known for his basic and clinical research on new techniques for opening the plaque-filled vessels that deliver blood to the heart muscle and on methods to prevent restenosis, the tendency for those vessels to narrow again after treatment.

He came to the University last summer from the University of Southern California, where he was a professor of medicine and chief of the division of cardiology at the Los Angeles County and USC Medical Center and University Hospital.

The author or co-author of nearly 150 articles in peer-reviewed journals, editor of three books and author of 20 book chapters, Faxon serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Circulation, the American Journal of Cardiology and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

He has served as an investigator and on the data-and- safety monitoring boards for many nationwide clinical trials of new cardiovascular therapies and is routinely included on lists of the best cardiologists in the United States.