2023: Robert Salley, MD
Robert Salley, MD is a Private Practitioner, Adult and Congenital Cardiothoracic Surgery. He received his medical degree from Louisiana State University, and his post-graduate training at the University of South Alabama, Vanderbilt University, the University of Rochester, and Greenlane Hospital in New Zealand.
He has been a member of the St. Joseph Hospital Peer Review Committee since 2008. He has spoken at numerous events and has been published 114 times via abstracts, book chapters, monographs, etc.
2022: David Booth, MD
Dr. David Booth has been with the UK Medical Center and the Lexington VA Medical Center since 1981. Dr. Booth’s background is in hemodynamics and cardiac catheterization. He gravitated to interventional cardiology when PTCA was new, doing his first procedure in early 1982. The majority of his distribution of effort is in clinical care and hands-on training of cardiology fellows in various clinical settings. He has been involved in randomized clinical trials since 1981, including VA Cooperative and NIH-sponsored studies such as the ACME Trial, the VA trial of bypass surgery in unstable angina, the BEST Trial, the COURAGE Trial, and the ISCHEMIA Trial. He began to care for patients with pulmonary hypertension in the early 1990’s. Dr. Booth was the recipient of the 2017 Boris Surawicz Award for Clinical Teaching, and the 2022 Michael Spain Award from the UK Gill Cardiology Fellowship, for service to the cardiology fellowship.
2021: Vidya Yalamanchi, MD
After completing medical school in India, Dr. Yalamanchi dreamed of coming to the United States to further advance his medical training. He completed his residency training in Chicago and always knew he wanted to become a Cardiologist, after having witnessed his brother in law suffer a myocardial infarction at a young age. Knowing that what partially contributed to his demise was that he did not have access to appropriate medical care or facilities, Dr. Yalamanchi had a personal mission to serve a community that was in need of cardiology services.
In his search he came across Hazard, KY, and at that time ARH was building a new hospital. The mountains reminded him of his hometown in India, and he was also excited about the care, potential services, and education that he could provide, to help a community that carries a high incidence rate of coronary artery disease. It was then that he decided to move to Hazard to help provide patients gain better access to medical care locally.
When he moved to Hazard in 1986, there was only a treadmill stress test available. However when he started his practice, they quickly began performing echocardiograms and nuclear stress tests. He was easily seeing 2-3 patients a day with myocardial infarctions and transferred them out several hours away for further cardiac care. He quickly learned there was a need for a cardiac cath lab in this small community.
After they started performing heart catheterization procedures, they got extremely busy and soon recognized the need for another cath lab. He was honored to donate the money to a community who had welcomed him, and with that they were able to start the second lab. Since then their cardiac services only continue to expand and they now offer cardiac surgery locally.
2020: Susan Smyth, MD, PhD, FACC
An accomplished cardiologist and translational scientist, Smyth graduated from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and earned her medical degree, as well as a PhD in pharmacology, from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She did her internal medicine residency, including a year as chief resident, at the University Medical Center in Stony Brook, NY, and completed cardiology fellowships at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York and the University of North Carolina.
Prior to joining UAMS in 2021, Smyth was chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and director of the Gill Heart and Vascular Institute at the University of Kentucky. She also served as a cardiologist and funded investigator for the VA Health Care System and on the faculty of the University of North Carolina. She was a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, past president of the Association of University Cardiologists and served on the CTSA Steering Committee for the National Center for Advancing Translational Science.
An active member of the ACC, Smith served as governor of the ACC Kentucky Chapter from 2016 to 2018 – helping to blaze a trail for other women BOG leaders. As immediate-past governor, she chaired the College’s Cardiovascular Enterprise Task Force, which worked closely with the Cardiovascular Management Member Section and MedAxiom to create a toolkit for chapters to engage heath systems, members and private groups to support the business side of cardiology and nonclinical competencies. Most recently, she was an active member and leader in the ACC’s Academic Cardiology Section.
2019: Jesse Adams, MD, FACC
Dr Adams is an adult cardiologist with Baptist Health in Louisville. He was the lead author on the original clinical validation studies for cardiac troponin I and has published numerous scientific papers as well as editing two textbooks on markers in cardiology. He has served as the president of the Kentuckiana Metro chapter of the American Heart Association. He also has served in numerous roles and committees with the American College of Cardiology, including Governor for the Kentucky chapter. He currently serves on the Executive Council for the CV Management Section of the ACC and is chair of the CV Management Section’s Publication Writing Group.
2018: Roberto Bolli, MD, FAHA, FACC
University of Louisville cardiologist and researcher, Roberto Bolli, MD, FAHA, FACC, is director of U of L’s Institute of Molecular Cardiology and serves as scientific director of the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute at the university. He is also a professor and chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the School of Medicine. In the past year, he received one of the largest grants ever for medical research at the University of Louisville, to study a promising new type of adult cardiac stem cell that has the potential to treat heart failure. Dr. Bolli’s research focus has been on how to repair the heart and cure heart failure using a patient’s own stem cells. It is an approach that could revolutionize the treatment of heart disease.
2017: Juan Villafañe, MD, FACC
Juan Villafañe has practiced pediatric cardiology and cardiac electrophysiology in Kentucky since 1986 when he joined the University of Louisville to become the first pediatric cardiac electrophysiologist in the whole region. He is now a full time senior pediatric cardiologist practicing non-invasive cardiology and electrophysiology. He has a faculty appointment as Professor in Pediatrics at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Villafañe is board certified in Pediatrics and Pediatric Cardiology. He received his pediatric cardiology training at the University of Puerto Rico in 1981. In addition, he did a two-year fellowship at the University of Miami specializing in pediatric cardiology and cardiac electrophysiology.
2016: David Moliterno, MD, FACC
Dr. David J. Moliterno is a Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Kentucky. He is a member of the interventional cardiology faculty in the Gill Heart and Vascular Institute. He received a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Michigan, his medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia, and his Internal Medicine training from Vanderbilt University. He completed a fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at The University of Texas-Southwestern Medical Center, and he completed an additional interventional cardiology fellowship at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, where he remained as an attending cardiologist for 10 years before joining the University of Kentucky in 2004.
Heavily involved with medical societies, Dr. Moliterno is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology, Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, and the American Heart Association. He has been voted among the Best Doctors in America since 2001 and is a life member of the National Registry of Who’s Who. Dr. Moliterno has been a visiting professor or invited lecturer in more than 30 countries. For the ACC, Dr. Moliterno has served in many roles including as a member of the Board of Governors, Strategic Education Committee, Publications Committee, Task Force on Clinical Expert Consensus Documents, Interventional Section Leadership Council, and the Clinical Policy Approval Committee. He was the editor-in-chief for CathSAP-3 and CathSAP-4 as well as the co-chair, chair, and immediate past chair for the ACC i2 Summit at the Annual Scientific Sessions in 2010-2012.
He is the author or coauthor of over 350 publications, 70 book chapters, and editor of 9 textbooks, including the Textbook of Cardiovascular Catheterization and Intervention and 1001 Questions: An Interventional Cardiology Board Review. He has been the primary author of publications in Annals of Internal Medicine, Circulation, JACC, JAMA, Lancet, BMJ, and the New England Journal of Medicine. As a clinical researcher, Dr. Moliterno has been involved with numerous multinational investigational studies in cardiovascular medicine as principal investigator or international steering committee member. Collectively, these studies have involved over $1 billion in clinical trial research.