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Eric Velazquez, MD

Robert W. Berliner Professor of Medicine (Cardiology)
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Additional Titles

Chief, Cardiovascular Medicine

Deputy Director, Clinical Trials Innovation, Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI)

Co-Chair, Clinical and Translational Research Oversight Committee

President’s contingency planning committee, Clinical Practice/Clinical Research Subcommittee

Chief, Cardiovascular Medicine, Yale New Haven Hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital

Physician-in-Chief, Heart and Vascular Center, Yale New Haven Health System, Yale New Haven Health System

About

Titles

Robert W. Berliner Professor of Medicine (Cardiology)

Chief, Cardiovascular Medicine; Deputy Director, Clinical Trials Innovation, Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI); Co-Chair, Clinical and Translational Research Oversight Committee; President’s contingency planning committee, Clinical Practice/Clinical Research Subcommittee

Positions outside Yale

Chief, Cardiovascular Medicine, Yale New Haven Hospital, Yale New Haven Hospital; Physician-in-Chief, Heart and Vascular Center, Yale New Haven Health System, Yale New Haven Health System

Biography

Eric J. Velazquez, MD, the Robert W. Berliner Professor of Medicine, is an internationally recognized authority in heart failure, cardiovascular clinical trials, and cardiac imaging.

Velazquez serves as the section chief for Cardiovascular Medicine for Yale School of Medicine and the Physician-in-Chief of the Heart and Vascular Center for Yale New Haven Health where he coordinates a high-volume enterprise and an outstanding group of clinician-investigators, physician scientists, and staff who make important contributions across patient care, research and educational domains. He leads more than 150 specialists who focus on every area of cardiac medicine, tapping into a broad array of tools, technologies, and expertise.

Additionally, he is the Deputy Director, Clinical Trials Innovation at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation. Velazquez chose to pursue a career in cardiovascular medicine twenty years ago and through key leadership positions, he has pursued clinical, research, and methodologic interests and facilitated multicenter clinical research programs and quality initiatives with substantive focus and impact on vulnerable and underserved populations at high medical risk, and has honed the administrative skills required to implement challenging programs in diverse settings globally. Today, much of his research and clinical work focuses on the intersection between heart failure and coronary heart disease. As a clinical investigator, he has made major contributions in the design, development, and implementation of landmark clinical trials that have altered international guidelines and the treatment of patients with chronic heart failure. These programs have established the evidence for best practice standards, modified treatment guidelines, and have had a direct impact on the U.S. public health.

Appointments

Education & Training

Fellow
Duke University School of Medicine (2001)
Research Fellow
Duke University School of Medicine (2001)
Clinical Research Fellow
Duke Clinical Research Institute (2001)
Fellow
Duke University School of Medicine (2000)
MD
Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1997)
Visiting Junior Registrar
John Radcliffe Hospital (1997)
Senior Assistant Resident
Duke University School of Medicine, (1997)
Junior Assistant Resident
Duke University School of Medicine (1996)
Intern
Duke University School of Medicine (1995)
BA
Williams College, Psychology (1988)

Research

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Eric Velazquez's published research.

Publications

2024

Academic Achievements & Community Involvement

  • activity

    Acute Heart Failure Management 2020: Are we on the right path?

  • activity

    Pulse-Keynote Speaker

  • activity

    Acute Heart Failure Management 2020: Are we on the right path?

  • activity

    Therapy with Sacubitril-Valsartan Should Begin In-Hospital

  • activity

    Yale-Fundacion Santa Fe Cardiology Symposium

Clinical Care

Overview

Eric J. Velazquez, MD, is chief of cardiovascular medicine for Yale Medicine and Yale New Haven Hospital, physician-in-chief of the Yale New Haven Health System Heart and Vascular Center. He leads more than 150 specialists who focus on every area of cardiac medicine, tapping into a broad array of tools, technologies, and expertise.

A practicing cardiologist himself, Dr. Velazquez is an internationally recognized authority in heart failure, cardiovascular clinical trials, and cardiac imaging, and he has a passion for treating patients with coronary disease. He says the earlier a patient seeks help for fatigue, shortness of breath, and other key symptoms, the more a cardiologist can help.

“We are fortunate today that medical and device therapies, as well as surgical approaches that were only being tested a couple of decades ago, are now available to patients routinely,” says Dr. Velazquez, who was inspired to become a cardiologist, in part, by his own family history of the disease. “I tell patients, ‘Don’t dismiss your symptoms. If we diagnose your disease before it becomes advanced, there's so much more we can apply to your care that might make your future life much better.’”

The Robert W. Berliner Professor of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Velazquez has been involved in such areas as population health, community care, genetics, discovery science, and translational and clinical research—all of which he says feed into better care for heart disease. “For example, in population health, we track patients who have had heart attacks and other heart-related problems, and this has given us information that we can use to better evaluate health and mitigate the progression of disease,” he says.

Dr. Velazquez has made major contributions as a clinical investigator in the design, development, and implementation of landmark clinical trials that have altered international guidelines and the treatment of patients with chronic heart failure. He sees this type of work thriving at Yale. “I’m very fortunate to be at the helm of a group of doctors who wake up every day and think about the patients they're going to see—and at the same time, pay attention to what it is about each encounter that they can look at critically, improve upon, and maybe apply in a research setting with the goal of bringing it back to a future patient,” he says.

Clinical Specialties

Cardiovascular Medicine; Heart Failure; Genetics

Yale Medicine News

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Contacts

Mailing Address

Yale University

PO Box 208017

New Haven, CT 06520-8017

United States

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