The American College of Cardiology (ACC) has named the influential interventional cardiologist and clinical trialist Roxana Mehran (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) as its new president.
Her appointment was confirmed during the convocation ceremony at the American College of Cardiology’s annual scientific session (ACC.26; 28–30 March, New Orleans, USA).
“I am deeply honoured to serve as president of the American College of Cardiology. I am profoundly grateful to my family, my colleagues, my patients, and the mentors who have shaped my journey,” says Mehran. “My mission will be to advance cardiovascular care through innovation, equity, and global collaboration—working closely with our partners at the American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology to improve heart health for all.”
Mehran is director of the Women’s Heart and Vascular Center at Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital and director of the Center for Interventional Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Trials, as well as the Mount Sinai Professor in Cardiovascular Clinical Research and Outcomes at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Mehran recently spoke to Cardiovascular News, discussing her start in medicine, her mission to improve gender equity in the field and her aims for her ACC presidency.
“The ACC’s mission is to transform cardiovascular care for all, and its members are the driving force behind that mission. They deliver care at the bedside, conduct groundbreaking research in laboratories, and translate discoveries into evidence through clinical trials,” she said.
“Leadership, to me, is fundamentally about public service. True leadership cannot be self-serving. That principle has guided me since my earliest days in medicine, and it is what ultimately brings people into leadership roles.
“One of my strengths is recognising how much more we can accomplish together. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Addressing it requires global collaboration, across societies and borders.”
Mehran is an internationally renowned interventional cardiologist and clinical researcher. She is globally respected for her work focused on designing and implementing randomised clinical trials and outcomes research projects and publishing the results in high-impact academic publications.
She has served as principal investigator for numerous global studies and developed important practice guidelines for treating patients with cardiovascular disease. She has focused on personalised medicine and developed individual risk scores for bleeding and acute kidney injury, participates regularly in developing clinical guidelines, and has authored more than 2,000 peer-reviewed articles.
Mehran is a founder and previously held the position of chief scientific officer of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF). She also leads the Lancet Commission on Women’s Cardiovascular Diseases, which has brought together leading researchers from around the world to identify and bridge gaps in scientific discovery, clinical trials, and care for women with cardiovascular disease.
She was recently named director of the Women’s Heart and Vascular Center at Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital, spearheading a program that represents a collaboration across multiple disciplines designed to meet the specific needs of women’s cardiovascular health. In 2019, she founded Women as One, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to advancing opportunities for women in medicine, where she serves as chair of the Board.
