AHA Presents Awards to Illinois Doctors

This week at the Board and Committee meetings in Dallas Texas, awards were presented to two Illinois doctors. We would like to take a moment to say congratulations, and thank them for their hard work and dedication to the American Heart Association

 Gold Heart Award

Clyde W. Yancy, MD, MSc, FAHA

Clyde is chief of the Division of Cardiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He was AHA president in 2009-10. A volunteer for more than 20 years, Clyde has been a highly effective national spokesperson for the AHA. He has also contributed to multiple AHA scientific statements and guidelines and most recently was the writing committee chair for the 2013 ACCF/AHA Guideline for the Management of Heart Failure and a leader in exploring innovative approaches as a member of the joint ACCF/AHA Task Force on Clinical Practice Guidelines. Clyde is currently a member of the Metro Chicago board, and is actively engaged in Power To End Stroke, Voices for Healthy Kids and Target: Heart Failure.

As president, Clyde provided steadfast leadership as the AHA worked toward and achieved its longtime advocacy priority of healthcare reform. Clyde also served on the writing committee that created the AHA's 2020 Impact Goal, and coined the term "Life's Simple 7" to help consumers understand key health factors and behaviors. As an AHA volunteer Clyde has worked tirelessly to increase awareness of cultural disparities in health care. In Dallas, where he was president in 1995-96, he helped establish the African-American Task Force, and in Chicago, where he relocated in 2011, he has helped develop board priorities for health equity and hypertension in minorities. In 2003, he received the AHA's Physician of the Year Award.

 Physician of the Year Award

Neil J. Stone, MD, FAHA

Neil is the Robert Bonow, MD Professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He is being honored for nearly three decades of exemplary service to advance the AHA's efforts to promote healthy lifestyles and cardiovascular risk modification.

An internationally recognized expert in preventive cardiology and lipidology, Neil has contributed his scientific expertise as a longtime member of the Nutrition Committee (which he chaired from 1993-95) as well as the Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism (now the Council on Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health), the Council on Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology and the Council on Clinical Cardiology. He has made key contributions to numerous AHA statements and guidelines, including as co-chairperson of the 2011 scientific statement, "Triglycerides and Cardiovascular Disease." In addition, he was chairperson of the ACC/AHA expert panel that created the 2013 Guideline on the Treatment of Blood Cholesterol to Reduce Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Risk in Adults, a paradigm-shifting contribution to the care of patients. He has been an associate editor for the AHA Learning Library since 2006.

As an AHA volunteer and with the patients he sees every day, Neil is a fervent proponent of lifestyle intervention, especially diet and physical activity. He has published more than 150 research papers, and is co-author of the textbook, "Management of Lipids in Clinical Practice," now in its 7th edition.