Vasan Ramachandran, MD, FACC, FAHA

I am the Founding Dean of the UT School of Public Health San Antonio. Previously, I served as the Chief in the Section of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology in the Department of Medicine and as Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Public Health (BUSPH). I also served as the Principal Investigator of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS, the oldest running epidemiology study in the US) between 2014 to 2022. I am the Principal Investigator of the Risk Underlying the Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal (RURAL) Study (one of the youngest cohort studies in the US) that studies rural populations in southern Appalachia and the Missisippi Delta. Funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), RURAL collaborates with sixteen institutions across the US led by a cross-functional and transdisciplinary team of investigators.

I am a cardiologist with subspecialty training in echocardiography and cardiovascular epidemiology and have a long-standing commitment to clinical epidemiological research. My personal and professional experiences have sensitized me to the necessity of active, intentional, and ongoing engagement with the diversity of fellow humans and developing a deeper understanding of their lived experiences within institutions, systems, and society. My research draws direct attention to the importance of addressing health disparities and working toward health equity, particularly the critical need to evaluate and address social determinants of health as upstream mediators of race-related disparities in CVD.  

My research is focused on: A) Public health issues in historically marginalized populations with the focus on rural health. B)The epidemiology and novel risk markers of heart failure (HF), with a focus on HFpEF, including evaluating the role of LV and vascular remodeling and ventricular-vascular coupling; C) Population-based echocardiography and arterial stiffness, including identifying biological, environmental, and genetic determinants, normative standards and prognostic implications; D) Population- based exercise testing, with a current focus on cardiopulmonary exercise testing with metabolite profiling; E) Detailed assessment of novel biomarkers of CVD risk, risk prediction, subclinical atherosclerosis and genomics of CVD traits, including metabolomics, proteomics, and the microbiome.