CONFERENCE CHAIR:
Jan N. Basile, MD, FACP, FASH, FAHA
Professor of Medicine
Seinsheimer Cardiovascular Health Program
Medical University of South Carolina
Ralph H Johnson VA Medical Center
Vice-Chair of Clinical Programs AHA Council of Hypertension
Charleston, SC

Dr. Jan N. Basile earned his medical degree in 1978 from the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. He then completed his internship and residency at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, where he was also Chief Resident. He is board certified in internal medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP), the American Society of Hypertension (FASH), and the American Heart Association (FAHA). For many years he served on the American Society of Hypertension (ASH) Board of Directors and is now serving within the AHA as Vice-Chair of Clinical Programs on the Council of Hypertension.

His honors and awards include the MUSC School of Medicine Excellence in Teaching award, the Golden Apple award, and, in 2014, he was the first recipient of the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control Hypertension Physician of the Year award. Recently, he received the Marvin Moser Clinical Hypertension Award from the American Heart Association Council on Hypertension. He was President of the Southern Medical Association from 2008-2009.

Currently, he is Professor of Medicine at MUSC. He spent 31 years at the Ralph H Johnson VA Medical Center while faculty at MUSC having retired from federal service as Chief of Primary Care in 2009. He continues to direct the resistant hypertension clinic within the Seinsheimer Cardiovascular Health Program, a multi-risk factor lipid and resistant hypertension referral clinic at MUSC.

Dr. Basile’s research interests include outcome-based studies involving hypertension, lipid disorders, and diabetes. He has been involved in many large hypertension trials including the ALLHAT, ACCORD, VALUE, ONTARGET, ACCOMPLISH, ACCORD and SPRINT and SPRINT-MIND trials most under the auspices of the NHLBI. He was a contributing reviewer of the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC 7) and the 2017 ACC-AHA Guideline for the Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults

Dr. Basile has published more than 300 original papers, abstracts, and book chapters, as well as a textbook, Hot Topics: Hypertension. He is a contributing author for the hypertension section of "Up To Date".

George Bakris, MD, MA, FASH, FASN, FAHA
Professor of Medicine
Director, ASH Comprehensive Hypertension Center
The University of Chicago Medicine
Chicago, IL

Dr. George Bakris is a tenured Professor of Medicine and Director of the ASH Comprehensive Hypertension Center in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago Medicine.

Dr. Bakris has published over 800 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in the areas of diabetic kidney disease, hypertension and progression of nephropathy. He is the Editor or Co-Editor of 20 books, in the areas of Kidney Disease Progression and Diabetes as well as the new 3rd edition of Hypertension: A Companion to Braunwald’s The Heart. Additionally, he is an Associate Editor of the International Textbook of Cardiology. He was a member of the NIH National High Blood Pressure Education Program Working Group on Hypertension and Renal Disease (1994). He also served as a special government expert to the Cardio-renal Advisory Board of the FDA and to CMS (1994-2008). He was a co-principal investigator on the NIH Clinical Research training grant for clinical research (K30) (1999-2004). He chaired the first National Kidney Foundation Consensus report on blood pressure and impact on renal disease progression (2000). He has also served on many national guideline committees including: The Joint National Committee Writing Groups VI & 7 (1997, 2003), the JNC 7 Executive Committee (2003), the American Diabetes Association Clinical Practice Guideline Committee (2002-2004), the National Kidney Foundation (K-DOQI) Blood Pressure Guideline Committee (2002-2004 & 2013), (K-DOQI) Diabetes Guideline Committee (2003-2005 & 2014), Chair, ADA BP Consensus Report (2016) and writing committee ACC/AHA Resistant Hypertension Consensus Report (2016-2017). Dr. Bakris is the past-president of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology (2000-2002) and the American Society of Hypertension (ASH). He is the current Editor-in-Chief, Am J Nephrology, Editor-in-Chief - Up-to-Date, Nephrology section, Hypertension Section Editor Up-to-Date and Assoc. Ed of Diabetes Care. He serves on more than 18 editorial boards including Nephrology, Dialysis & Transplant, Hypertension, J Hypertension, and J American Soc. Hypertension. Additionally, he is the Hypertension editor of the Merck Manual.

Nihar R. Desai, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine
Associate Chief, Section of Cardiovascular Medicine
Investigator, Center for Outcomes Research and Investigation

Dr. Nihar R. Desai is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Chief of the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, an Investigator at the Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, and Medical Director for Value Innovation at the Yale New Haven Health System Heart and Vascular Center. His interests focus on cardiovascular health services and comparative effectiveness research, examining patterns of care, identifying opportunities to improve clinical outcomes, and evaluating the impact of novel care delivery systems on cost and quality. In addition, he serves as a clinical consultant on the CMS acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and coronary artery bypass graft surgery readmission and mortality measures. He graduated with highest honors from Lehigh University before completing an internship in the Clinton White House. He then attended the University of Connecticut School of Medicine where he received his Doctorate in Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health where he received his Master’s in Public Health. Dr. Desai completed his residency training in Internal Medicine as well as his clinical fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He then completed a research fellowship at the TIMI Study Group with Dr. Eugene Braunwald. His scholarly work has been published in New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Circulation, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Silvio E. Inzucchi, MD
Professor of Medicine, Endocrinology
Clinical Director, Section of Endocrinology
Director, Yale Diabetes Center
Director, Endocrinology & Metabolism Fellowship
Director, Yale Affiliated Hospitals
Yale School of Medicine
Hartford, CT

Dr. Silvio E. Inzucchi received his undergraduate degree from Fordham University in New York City and his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine and his post-doctoral Fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Yale-New Haven Hospital, in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He is currently Professor of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, where he serves as Clinical Chief of the Section of Endocrinology, Medical Director of the Yale Diabetes Center, and Program Director of the Endocrinology & Metabolism Fellowship.

Daniel E. Soffer, MD, FNLA, FACP
University of Pennsylvania Health System
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
PennCare Media
Penn Medicine at Radnor
Perelman Center of Advanced Medicine, Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA

Dr. Daniel E. Soffer is a full-time clinician and educator as Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Division of Translational Medicine and Human Genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a lipid specialist whose clinical focus is Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine and General Internal Medicine. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and American Board of Clinical Lipidology, and Fellow of the National Lipid Association (NLA) and American College of Physicians (ACP).

Dr. Soffer is involved in multiple education activities at the University of Pennsylvania, the National Lipid Association (NLA), and commercial continuing medical education as well. He is involved with many NLA activities including administration, education, meeting planning, and editing. He is Immediate Past President (2018/2019) of the Northeast Chapter of the NLA and he is also the co-director of the Philadelphia Lipid and Atherosclerosis Club (PLAC). He is the co-Editor of LipidSpin and co-Director of the Foundations of Lipidology course for the NLA. In addition to clinical medicine, teaching, writing, and editing, he also participates as an investigator in ongoing clinical research with lipid-modifying pharmacotherapies. He earned BA and MD from the University of Pennsylvania and Internal Medicine residency was completed at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Carol H. Wysham, MD
Clinical Professor of Medicine
University of Washington School of Medicine
Clinical Endocrinologist
Spokane, WA

Dr. Carol H. Wysham is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and is a clinical endocrinologist and educator in the field of endocrinology, with special interested in management of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. She has been active in clinical research in diabetes treatments for over 25 years, having participated as site principal investigator in the ADOPT, ACCORD, AIM HIGH, FLAT SUGAR, TECOS, LEADER, EMPA-REG, and CANVAS trials. She chaired the Professional Practice Committee of the American Diabetes Association & chaired the 2016 Annual Meeting Steering Committee of the Endocrine Society. She is a member and on the council of the Endocrine Society. She is a fellow of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American College of Physicians and is a member of the American Diabetes Association. Dr. Wysham graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Oregon Health and Sciences University and returned to Iowa for fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism. Her current clinical interests are early aggressive treatment of type 2 diabetes and the management of diabetes in the older adult.

William B. White, MD
Professor of Medicine, Emeritus
Calhoun Cardiology Center
University of Connecticut School of Medicine
Farmington, CT

Dr. William B. White is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and former Chief of the Division of Hypertension and Clinical Pharmacology in the Calhoun Cardiology Center at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research of the American Heart Association (AHA) and was the President of the American Society of Hypertension from 2012-2014.

The speaker has a longstanding interest in clinical hypertension and pharmacology, particularly in the areas of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, clinical trials of antihypertensive drugs, and the impact of non-cardiac drugs on cardiovascular safety. He is the author of over 450 original articles and scores of book chapters in the field of cardiovascular medicine and pharmacology. Dr. White has also published several textbooks, including Blood Pressure Monitoring in Cardiovascular Medicine and Therapeutics (Springer Verlag) and Hypertension and Related Disorders (CV Mosby Press). To support this work, Dr. White has been the recipient of competitive research funding from the NIH/NIA, the AHA, the Donaghue Research Foundation, and investigator-initiated grants from industry.

During the past 2 decades, Dr. White has been part of the leadership of major clinical trials in cardiovascular medicine, including the CONVINCE trial which evaluated cardiovascular outcomes in at risk patients using chronotherapy, the CARES trial which evaluated the cardiovascular safety of xanthine oxidase inhibitors in gout, EXAMINE, which assessed the impact of the DPP-4 inhibitor alogliptin in patients with type 2 diabetes and acute coronary syndromes, and the MIRCERA PASS trial which assessed mortality outcomes in patients with renal anemia. More recently, Dr White has conducted the INFINITY trial, a study assessing the impact of varying levels of 24-hour blood pressure on cerebrovascular outcomes in older people, funded by the National Institute of Aging.