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INFORMATION FOR

Preventive Cardiovascular Health Program at Yale (PCHPY)

Preventive Cardiovascular Health Program at Yale (PCHPY) brings a personalized approach to cardiovascular disease prevention. Patients referred to the program meet with one of our cardiologists for an in-depth consultation that takes into account their biology and biography, along with information from advanced diagnostic testing. This approach leads to a more personalized, evidence-based approach to cardiovascular risk assessment. Using this information, and in partnership with patients, we design tailored programs to reduce cardiovascular risk and improve well-being.

PCHPY brings together experts in cardiovascular disease prevention, including cardiologists, nutritionists, exercise physiologists and health psychologists. We also work together with IT (information technology) and digital health companies to offer high-tech/low-burden approaches to cardiovascular care. Our team is highly attuned to the challenges of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and taking medication, and understands that a one-size-fits all approach often falls short. Instead, we strive to understand and integrate each person’ priorities, preferences and goals into the care plan.

This program is particularly focused on people who are:

  • At increased risk for cardiovascular disease, including people with:
    • Severe hypercholesterolemia or Familial Hypercholesterolemia
    • Family history of premature (before the age of 60) coronary artery disease
    • Poorly controlled hypertension
    • Underlying inflammatory condition (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis; HIV)
    • A diagnosis of ischemic heart disease or coronary artery disease
  • Women with cardiovascular disease
  • Individuals seeking a more personalized approach to cardiovascular health

PCHPY additionally works with communities to identify and address barriers to cardiovascular health, focusing on environmental and social factors that contribute to disparities in health outcomes.

Directors

Faculty

  • Matthew Burg, PhD

    Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

    Dr. Burg is a clinical psychologist whose research concerns the contribution of stress and emotional factors to incident cardiovascular disease and prognosis, the pathophysiology underlying this risk, and the development and testing of behavioral interventions to mitigate this risk. His focus includes patients at risk for hypertension, and those with ischemic heart disease, cardiac arrhythmia, and congestive heart failure, and his work is funded by both the NIH and the Veterans Administration.
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  • Attila Feher, MD, PhD

    Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)

    After graduating from medical school at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, Dr. Feher completed his PhD training at his medical school institution studying how coronary microvessels behave in obesity and diabetes mellitus. After finishing his internal medicine residency at Cornell University, prior to starting his cardiology fellowship, he spent two years at the Yale Translational Research Imaging Center (Y-TRIC) to learn multimodality imaging techniques used for the investigation of the coronary microcirculation. He is the recipient of American Physiological Society Cardiovascular Section Research Recognition Award, the Japanese Society for Microcirculation Young Investigator Award and the Hal O'Brien Rising Star Award. His most recent work has been focusing on studying the interaction between autoimmunity and the microcirculation by using molecular imaging and multimodality imaging techniques. Dr. Feher hopes that by studying this interaction, he will be able to discover better tools for the in vivo assessment of coronary microvascular disease.
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  • Antonio Giaimo, MD

    Assistant Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine

    Antonio Giaimo, MD, is a general cardiologist who evaluates and treats a wide range of cardiac conditions. He has special training in caring for patients with high cholesterol and hypertension, including resistant hypertension (persistently elevated blood pressure despite three or more medications), secondary forms of hypertension, and labile blood pressure disorders such as orthostatic hypotension. “My interest in hypertension and lipid disorders comes from a similar place,” Dr. Giaimo says. Both are primary conditions in the development of most heart disease in the United States, he says. The two conditions can be outright inherited and or have an inherited component contributing to the disease, he adds. “And both can be effectively prevented and/or treated so that symptomatic heart disease never develops.” The best part of this work is meeting patients in a medical office setting where he can get to know them and discuss ways they can enjoy their life free of symptomatic heart disease long before it becomes serious enough to require hospitalization. “I started my training as a primary care physician because I felt strongly that the most important medicine happens outside the hospital,” he says. “I soon realized that the vast majority of my patients had poorly controlled risk factors for developing such problems as hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol. I became a cardiologist so I could focus on giving those conditions the attention they deserve.” In addition to caring for patients, Dr. Giaimo is an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at Yale School of Medicine with research interests in the improvement of access to care and the appropriate treatment of patients with severely elevated blood pressures who seek care in the emergency department.
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  • Sarah Goldstein, MD

    Assistant Professor

    Dr. Goldstein is a cardiologist who specializes in caring for adults with congenital heart disease and patients with congenital or acquired heart disease affecting pregnancy. Dr. Goldstein graduated with Distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine where she was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. She completed her training in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine, and Adult Congenital Heart Disease at Duke University Medical Center. During her fellowships, Dr. Goldstein also completed specialized training in Cardio-Obstetrics that included multidisciplinary collaboration in both clinical care and research.  Dr. Goldstein’s research focuses on improving the effectiveness of preconception counseling for patients with complex cardiac disease.
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  • Yuan Lu, ScD

    Assistant Professor

    Dr. Lu was trained in epidemiology and global health, with a particular focus on cardiovascular diseases. She obtained both of her ScD and MSc Degrees in Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health. She works in the intersection of cardiovascular disease prevention, health equity, and digital health, using implementation science methods to resolve real-world issues. Her long-term goal is to improve care, outcomes, and equity of cardiovascular diseases by designing and implementing technology-based interventions. She recently completed an NHLBI K12 career development award in implementation science, in which she leveraged the electronic health records from the Yale New Haven Health System to identify patients with persistent hypertension and design decision supports to improve their care. Over the past few years, she has been working on a number of groundbreaking collaborating projects between Yale University and the Chinese National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases in Beijing. These include the Millions Persons Project that assembles remarkable population health and biomedical resources from 5 million people across China. She has also worked with the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) on global analyses of the impact of risk factors on global burden of cardiovascular diseases. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications, including first author articles in leading journals such as The Lancet, JAMA, Circulation, and BMJ, and her work has been cited more than 40,000 times. Dr. Lu is the recipient of the 2022 John H. Laragh Research Award of the American Journal of Hypertension for her contribution to the field of hypertension.
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  • Arya Mani, MD, FACC, FAHA

    Robert W Berliner Professor of Internal Medicine (Cardiology) and Professor of Genetics; Director, Cardiovascular Genetics Program; Director, Cardiovascular Module

    Dr. Mani received his M.D. from Johannes Gutenberg University in 1991 in Germany where he had begun his scientific studies in cancer research. Later that year, he arrived at Yale and worked with Dr. Fred Gorelick on pancreatic exocrine diseases in the Department of Cell Biology and Gastroenterology prior to starting his Internal Medicine residency training at Yale New Haven Hospital, which he completed in 1996 after which he was chosen as chief resident. He then pursued a cardiovascular clinical fellowship at Yale along with post-doctoral studies in the Department of Genetics under Dr. Richard Lifton, where he began his focused work on human cardiovascular genetics. He joined the faculty in the Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, initially as an instructor. He was appointed to assistant professor in 2002 and promoted to professor of medicine and genetics in 2016. Dr. Mani has published his research findings in leading journals such as Science, NEJM, Cell Metab, PNAS, Nature Genetics, and others. Due to these and other scientific accomplishments, he has been invited to speak globally and has been recognized with multiple fellowships and awards, including the highly coveted NIH Outstanding Investigator Award in 2017.
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  • Judith Meadows, MD, MPH

    Associate Professor Term; Fellowship Director, Advanced Cardiac Imaging; Director, Cardiology Clinical Trial Unit; Director, Cardiac Imaging (Nuclear, MR, CT), Division of Cardiology; Director, Cardiometabolic Prevention Clinic, Division of Cardiology; Director, Nuclear Cardiology; Associate Director, Preventive Cardiovascular Health Program (PCHPY)

    Dr. Judith Meadows, MD MPH, is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the section of Cardiovascular Medicine, with appointments at Yale New Haven Hospital and VHA-Connecticut.  Dr. Meadows directs the cardiac imaging at VHA-Connecticut, inclusive of nuclear cardiology, cardiac CT, and cardiac MRI. Additionally, she is the fellowship director for the Yale Fellowship in Advanced Cardiac Imaging.  She leads the VISN1/VHA-New England cardiology clinical trial network which coordinates 15+ trials in the areas of coronary artery disease, vascular disease, heart failure, diabetes, and dyslipidemia. Dr. Meadows clinical focus is in cardio metabolic prevention, wherein she developed and oversees a patient-centered cardiometabolic primary prevention initiative at VA-Connecticut. Dr. Meadows received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College, majoring in Genetics and History.  She completed medical school at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  Dr. Meadows completed internal medicine residency at Yale New Haven Hospital, followed by clinical cardiology and advanced imaging and research training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  In addition, she completed an MPH in clinical effectiveness at Harvard University School of Public Health.  She was on the junior faculty at Northwestern University before she was recruited back to Yale School of Medicine in 2011 to be leader in the cardiac imaging program and to integrate clinical research into care models.
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  • Hamid Mojibian, MD

    Associate Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging; Director, Cardiac CT/MR Imaging; Associate Professor of Internal Medicine (Cardiology); Interim Chair, Department of Radiology

    Hamid Mojibian, MD, is director of cardiac CT/MR Imaging for Yale Medicine’s Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging.He and a team of radiologists and cardiologists perform cardiac imaging studies to detect heart problems such as coronary artery disease. In his role, Dr. Mojibian also performs minimally invasive interventional cardiac procedures such as thrombectomy to remove pulmonary embolisms. It’s a new procedure in which he inserts a device into the veins to the pulmonary artery that can remove blood clots blocking normal airflow to the lungs that cause the right side of the heart to fail. “Patients come to us in a very dire situation and leave almost normal,” he says. The nonsurgical procedure can be done in an hour or two and is done through a small hole in the groin, leaving no scar. “It feels amazing that we can provide immediate, life-changing care for patients.” Dr. Mojibian also performs a variety of other interventional procedures such as creating AV fistulas for dialysis using a safe, nonsurgical, outpatient technique. He enjoys working with referring cardiologists and nephrologists because providing the highest quality care, he says, requires dedicated teamwork.
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  • Samit Shah, MD, PhD, FACC, FSCAI

    Assistant Professor of Medicine; Director, VA Connecticut Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory

    Dr. Shah is an Interventional Cardiologist who specializes in the invasive evaluation of coronary artery disease and coronary physiology. He was an undergraduate at the Pennsylvania State University and went to medical school at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, where he graduated with a medical doctorate as well as doctorate in Neuroscience. He subsequently completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital, followed by clinical fellowships in Cardiovascular Medicine, Peripheral Vascular Interventions, and Interventional Cardiology. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine, and Interventional Cardiology. Dr. Shah's scholarly work has focused on the outcomes of cardiovascular interventions and the invasive assessment of coronary physiology. He has active research projects at Yale regarding invasive coronary physiology testing, ischemic heart disease in women, and the vascular effects of psychological stress.
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Administrative Staff

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