Suzanne Oparil, MD is Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Professor of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology, and Director of the Vascular Biology and Hypertension Program of the Division of Cardiovascular Disease in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has served as President of the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Society of Hypertension (ASH), and the American Federation for Clinical Research (AFCR) (later renamed American Federation for Medical Research; AFMR). Dr. Oparil has received numerous honorary memberships, lectureships and distinguished awards for her contributions to academic medicine, particularly the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. She is member of a number of prestigious societies, including the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the Association of American Physicians (AAP), the National Academy of Medicine (NAM; formerly IOM), and the Association of University Cardiologists (AUC). She has held important advisory positions with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including membership on task forces, expert panels and peer-review and guidelines committees. Most recently, she served as Co-Chair of the Joint National Committee charged with developing U.S. guidelines for the prevention, detection, James PA, et al. (JNC 8). JAMA 311(5):507-520, 2014).
Dr. Oparil has served for many years on the Panel on Scientific Boundaries for Review of the NIH Center for Scientific Review (CSR) and on the Special Emphasis Panel (SEP) for the NIH Loan Repayment Program (LRP). She served as Work Group Member of the Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) Guideline for Blood Pressure Management in Chronic Kidney Disease, and as Expert Writing Committee Member for the AHA 2011 Update: Effectiveness-Based Guidelines for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease in Women; Expert Writing Committee Member for the ACCF/AHA/NHLBI 2010 Expert Consensus Document on Hypertension in the Elderly; and as Expert Panel Member for various national and international writing committees in hypertension research. Dr. Oparil has over 30 years of leadership experience in the design, recruitment, analysis and dissemination of results of large multicenter clinical trials, including ALLHAT, LIFE, Symplicity HTN-3, and SPRINT.
Dr. Oparil has made many seminal contributions to vascular biology and hypertension research and has an impressive publication record of > 775 peer-reviewed articles on topics in clinical cardiology, atherosclerosis, heart failure, cardiovascular pathologies related to aging, vascular biology and hypertension and population science related to cardiovascular diseases.
