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. Editor 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 Manuel.

Christie Ballantyne, MD
Professor of Medicine
Chief-Sections of Cardiovascular Research & Cardiology
Director-Center for Cardiometabolic Disease Prevention
JS Abercrombie Chair-Atherosclerosis & Lipoprotein Research
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX

Dr. Christie Ballantyne is one of the nation's foremost experts on lipids, atherosclerosis and heart disease prevention. His research interest in the prevention of heart disease has led him to become an established investigator for the American Heart Association and to receive continuous funding from the NIH since joining the faculty in 1988 in basic research of leukocyte-endothelial interactions, translations research in biomarkers and clinical trials.

Over the past 34 years, his many accomplishments have included being elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians. In 2012, he received the American College of Cardiology Distinguished Scientist Award (Basic Domain). In 2014 and 2015, Thomson Reuters recognized Christie as one of "The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds."

With over 600 publications in the area of atherosclerosis, lipids and inflammation, Dr. Ballantyne also serves as an Editorial Director for www.lipid.org as well as serving on the Editorial Board for Circulation. Dr. Ballantyne is the Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Medicine, the Chief of Cardiology and the Chief of Cardiovascular Research at Baylor College of Medicine. He is currently the Director of the Lipid Metabolism and Atherosclerosis Clinic Center for Cardiometabolic Disease Prevention at Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Ballantyne received his MD from Baylor College of Medicine and performed both his internal medicine residency and postgraduate training at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He completed a cardiology fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine and an American Heart Association/Bugher Foundation Fellowship at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Institute for Molecular Genetics at Baylor.

Jan N. Basile, MD, FACP, FASH
Professor of Medicine
Seinsheimer Cardiovascular Health Program
Medical University of South Carolina
Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center
Charleston, SC

Dr. Jan N. Basile earned his medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. He then completed his internship and residency at the Medical University of South Carolina 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) and the American Society of Hypertension (FASH), and for many years served on the American Society of Hypertension (ASH) Board of Directors. Most recently, with the dissolution of ASH, he is serving within the AHA as Vice-Chair of Clinical Programs on the Council of Hypertension.

His many honors and awards include the Medical University of South Carolina 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. He was President of the Southern Medical Association in 2008-2009.

Currently, he is Professor of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Basile spent 31 years at the Ralph H Johnson VA Medical Center having retired as Chief of Primary Care in 2009. He now directs the resistant hypertension clinic within the Seinsheimer Cardiovascular Health Program, a multiple-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, ONTARGET, ACCOMPLISH, and SPRINT trials and continues to participate in SPRINT-ASK, under the auspices of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. 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 also is a contributing author for the hypertension section of "Up To Date".

Alan S. Brown, MD, FACC, FAHA, FNLA
Director, Division of Cardiology
Advocate Heart Institute
Advocate Lutheran General Hospital
Park Ridge, IL

Dr. Alan S. Brown has been the director of the Prevention Center/Lipid Clinic for Midwest Heart Specialists since its inception in 1985. He is a practicing interventional cardiologist and preventative cardiologist. He was appointed Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and Cardiology at Loyola from 1993 until present. Dr. Brown is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Echocardiography and Clinical Lipidology. He is currently the Director, Division of Cardiology at the Advocate Heart Institute at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, as well as Co-Director of the Cardiology Service Line for Advocate Medical Group/Advocate Health Care.

Dr. Brown has served as Governor/President of the Illinois Chapter of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and subsequently was elected Chairman of the Board of Governors for the American College of Cardiology in 2004. He is a Fellow of the American Heart Association, the National Lipid Association and the American College of Cardiology; has been a member of the ACC's Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease Committee, the Annual Scientific Program Committee, and currently serves on the ACC Task Force for Appropriate Use Criteria. Dr. Brown served as a member of the ACC Board of Trustees from 2003 through 2006. He is currently President-Elect of the National Lipid Association and a member of the Board of Directors for the American Society for Preventative Cardiology.

Dr. Brown has authored numerous articles in the field of lipid management and prevention, as well as two book chapters. He is the host of "Lipid Luminations", an internet radio show on Reach MD radio that focuses on lipid topics through interviews with national thought leaders.

Jay H. Shubrook, DO, FAAFP, FACOFP
Professor, Director of Clinical Research
Touro University California
Vallejo, CA

Dr. Jay Shubrook is a Family Physician and Fellowship trained Diabetologist. He is currently a Professor at Touro University California. He also serves as the Director of Clinical Research and the Director of Diabetes Services. He has been doing diabetes work exclusively for 15 years. He is the Associate Editor for the JAOA and Clinical Diabetes. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the American Family Physician. He serves on the Global Advisory Board for Springer/Nature Diabetes website called Medicine Matters - Diabetes. He is the immediate past Chair of the Primary Care Advisory Board of the American Diabetes Association. He oversees a large Diabetes Prevention Program network. His research interests focus on early intervention for type 2 diabetes. His professional goals are to better train the primary care workforce to manage diabetes.

Anthony J. Viera, MD, MPH, FAHA
Professor and Chair
Department of Community and Family Medicine
Duke University of School of Medicine
Durham, NC

Dr. Anthony J. Viera received his medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina and his Master of Public Health from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed his family medicine residency in the United States Navy and served as a family physician for eight years prior to a two-year fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UNC. He is currently Professor and Chair in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. Prior to his role at Duke, Dr. Viera was a faculty member in the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health since 2006. He continues as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at UNC. For the past 13 years, Dr. Viera has been conducting research on blood pressure monitoring and writing extensively about hypertension management. He is certified as a clinical hypertension specialist by the American Society of Hypertension and is recognized as a Fellow of the American Heart Association.

Michael A. Weber, MD
Professor of Medicine
SUNY Downstate College of Medicine
Brooklyn, NY

Dr. Michael A. Weber received his medical degree from Sydney University in Australia. His career has been focused primarily on hypertension and preventive cardiology. He has published numerous research articles in the medical literature and has authored or edited 16 books. Together with Dr. Suzanne Oparil, he is responsible for the widely used reference volume, Hypertension.

Dr. Weber is the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Clinical Hypertension. Dr. Weber was one of the founders of The American Society of Hypertension and has served as its President. He also served as Chair of the ASH Hypertension Specialists Program. He is a Fellow of The American College of Physicians, The American College of Cardiology and The American Heart Association. He has served on the Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Board of the Food and Drug Administration, and continues as a consultant to that Agency. He has also served for ten years as Chairman of the Formulary Committee of a major pharmacy benefits provider serving many of the leading health plans in the United States.

His main current research interests are in clinical trials of patients at high risk of cardiovascular events or strokes. He is also participating actively in trials in patients with metabolic disorders such as diabetes and kidney disease. Dr. Weber currently serves on the Steering Committees of several national and international clinical outcomes trials.

Laura A. Young, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC

Dr. Laura A. Young is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Nutritional Sciences at Michigan State University, Dr. Young and her MD/PhD from the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dr. Young completed her residency at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and her clinical fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of several professional organizations including American Diabetes Association and Endocrine Society. Dr. Young specializes in the care of patients with diabetes. She enjoys working closely with patients to help them realize and achieve both their short and long term health goals. Her research program focuses on a wide breadth of areas in diabetes, but Dr. Young has a special interest in the use of technology in diabetes. A common thread throughout much of Dr. Young’s research is the use of novel behavioral approaches to improve the care of patients with diabetes. The overarching goal of her clinical and research efforts is to help patients with diabetes live happier, healthier lives. In addition to her clinical work and research, Dr. Young spends a significant amount of her time at UNC working with trainees. In addition to mentoring medical students and residents, she is he Endocrinology Fellowship Program Director. In her free time, Dr. Young enjoys taking long walks, cooking, gardening, and spending time with family and friends.