Ehimen Aneni, MD, MPH, fellow, Cardiovascular Medicine
Why did you choose medicine and Yale?
My choice of medicine as a career was influenced largely by my desire to impact people’s lives in a tangible way. My mother worked as a nurse and growing up around the hospital environment, plus my interests in the biological sciences, solidified medicine as a career. One of the most notable influences I had as a medical student in Nigeria was a realization that there was a largely unrecognized epidemic of cardiovascular diseases and stroke, and that this epidemic was mirrored by the growing obesity and diabetes epidemic. With such interests that spanned endocrine (obesity - diabetes / insulin resistance spectrum), neurology (stroke) and heart disease, the natural choice for residency was internal medicine.
What was your path to Yale?
My path to Yale started in 2010 when I came to the United States on a scholarship to study global health and epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. There I got involved with several epidemiological projects – including one that took me to rural Namibia in sub-Saharan Africa for three months.
At the completion of my Master’s degree, I transitioned to a post-doctoral associate position in preventive cardiology research at the Center for Health Advancement and Outcomes. There we successfully leveraged work-place data to study cardiovascular health and outcomes (including healthcare costs and utilization) among workers of Baptist Health South Florida. We also started a longitudinal study examining cardiometabolic health and subclinical cardiovascular disease in Miami – the MiHeart study. I remained in Miami for internal medicine residency.
The combination of my research training and experience with my interests in academic cardiovascular medicine led me to pursue cardiology fellowship at Yale School of Medicine.
What is a fun fact about you?
I have lived in three continents (Africa, Europe, and North America), worked in three countries (Nigeria, Namibia, and the U.S.) and have both lived and worked in three U.S. states (Massachusetts, Florida, and Connecticut).
What is your five-year goal? 10-year? Overall career?
The overarching goal of my career is to prevent heart disease in diverse populations and to improve the quality of life of persons living with chronic heart conditions. I am a cardiometabolic health researcher and my current research has focused on the intersection of cardiovascular diseases and metabolic derangements, particularly those often overlooked by cardiologists. I am working on a project that will help us better understand the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and coronary microvascular function. Over the next five years, I intend to build on this, and other cardiometabolic health related projects. I also plan to have a general and preventive cardiology clinical practice. In the long term, I hope to teach both public health (epidemiology, global health) and cardiovascular medicine internationally and to bolster global health efforts at combating the emerging twin epidemics of metabolic (diabetes mellitus, hepatic steatosis, obstructive sleep apnea) and cardiovascular disease in sub-Saharan Africa.