Distinguished Professor of Medicine & Cardiology
Department of Cardiology, School of Medicine
Director of Isfahan Cardiovascular Research Institute, a WHO Collaborating Center
Isfahan University of Medical Sciences
Secretary of the National Network of Cardiovascular Research
President of the Iranian Heart Foundation
Email: nsarrafzadegan@gmail.com
Profile:Dr. Nizal Sarrafzadegan is a Distinguished Professor of Internal Medicine & Cardiology in Isfahan University in Iran and Affiliate Professor of the School of Population and Public Health (SPPH) in the University of British Columbian (UBC) in Vancouver, BC, Canada. She is the Founder Director of Isfahan Cardiovascular Research Center (ICRI) which is a World Health Organization (WHO) collaborating center in the EMR, and the Research Institute that consists of 7 research centers. She started her studies on Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) prevention, healthy lifestyle promotion and rehabilitation of cardiac patients since 1992 and published more than 650 articles in peer-reviewed journals. She took part in more than 80 international meetings as invited speaker or WHO advisor.
Her academic career combines a clinical background with strong interest in public health and preventive medicine specifically implementation and evaluation. She has numerous multidisciplinary collaborations with investigators at international level, got multiple national and international grants and supervised PhD students at national or international levels. Prof. Sarrafzadegan worked with the WHO on Chronic or Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) and CVD prevention and management as technical advisor, has strong collaboration with the “World Heart Federation”, the “International Atherosclerosis Society”, the “World Hypertension League”, the “International Council of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Rehabilitation”, the “EMRO-NCD alliance” etc. She is a member in the editorial or advisory board of peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of “American College of Cardiology”, the “Nature Reviews Cardiology”, the “International J. of Cardiology” among others.
She is the founder and head of the “Iranian Heart Foundation”, the “Iranian National Network of CVD Research”, the “The Eastern Mediterranean Network of Heart health”, the” Food, Industry and Healthy Community” etc. She has organized many international meetings, some as short-term training courses with WHO support aiming at building capacity in NCD or CVD research, implementation, prevention and control.
Prof. Sarrafzadegan was featured in high quality medical journals like the Lancet in 2006 and the Nature Reviews Cardiology in 2021 as a woman cardiologist who overcame challenges and achieved her plans. She won many awards like the 2016 WHO/EMR State of Kuwait award for NCD prevention and control because of her extensive research in cardiovascular disease. Her last years work with the WHO was being a member of the “WHO Expert Advisory Panel of NCD management 2016-2020”, “WHO Expert Panel on Developing Hypertension Guidelines2019-2022”, “WHO Mid- Point Evaluation of Global Action Plan of NCD Prevention 2019-2021”, “WHO Collaborative Network on COVID 19-2020-2022”, “WHO Essential Medicine List in 2019”.
She is the principal investigator of large-scale or national studies like the 'Isfahan Healthy Heart Program’, the “Persian Cardiovascular Disease Registry”, “Improving Hypertension Control”, the “PCI and CA Angio registry” the “Isfahan Cohort Study”, “the Twins Registry and cohort study”, the “Cancer-CVD risk assessment Cohort study”, “Familial Hypercholesterolemia Cohort study”, “The IraSalt study” among others.
Dr. Sarrafzadegan current research and interest includes working in the fields of “personalized/precision medicine in cardiology”, “Shared aspects of CVD and Cancers”, “Environmental Pollution and CVD”, “Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence role in CVD detection and management”, “Epigenetics and CVD” where she published many articles in these fields in the recent years.
She is teaching post graduate courses on “NCD epidemiology and prevention” in the SPPH in UBC/Canada and in China