17th Annual Meeting Agenda

Andrew Foy is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. Dr. Foy is a cardiologist and health services researcher with a principal research interest in conducting comparative effectiveness research on cardiac stress testing.

Dr. Foy completed his medical degree and Internal Medicine residency at Jefferson Medical College, and Cardiovascular Medicine fellowship at Penn State College of Medicine. He has been on the faculty at Penn State College of Medicine since 2011. In 2013, Dr. Foy received the Penn State Department of Medicine’s Excellence in Research Award, which recognizes scholarly inquiry and investigation related to education, educational processes, and dissemination and practical application of research results.

His work researching the management of patients with benign and renovascular hypertension has challenged the paradigm that “lower is better”. He and his colleagues published the first comprehensive review article of blood pressure trials assigning patients to different levels of blood pressure control. In regard to renal and cardiovascular outcomes, all were negative. This work has been cited by many important articles to follow and may have contributed to changes in blood pressure targets expressed in the new JNC-8 guidelines.

Dr. Foy also conducts research on the management of emergency department patients with low-risk chest pain, as well as research intended to raise awareness of unnecessary and overly-aggressive medical care.

Ragavendra Baliga, MBBS, MBA, FACC, FRCP, FRS (Med), is assistant director of new business development and a professor of internal medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Dr. Baliga earned his medical degree from St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore University, India, and his MBA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He completed a clinical fellowship in cardiology at the Royal Postgraduate School of Medicine, University of London, and a clinical and research fellowship in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass. Dr. Baliga was a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and completed two more advanced fellowships in cardiac specialties: one at Boston University Medical Center and one at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Dr. Baliga is the editor-in-chief for Heart Failure Clinics of North America, the associate editor for American College of Cardiology and Cardiosource Review Journal and the section editor for the Journal of American College of Cardiology—Cardiovascular Imaging. In addition, Dr. Baliga is the editor-in-chief of the popular textbook Practical Cardiology. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine in the United Kingdom, as well as the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and the American College of Cardiology. Dr. Baliga’s clinical interests include general cardiology, hypertension, elevated cholesterol and heart failure. His research focuses on heart failure, cardiomyopathy, hypertension, atherosclerosis and angina.

Daniel M. Philbin Jr., MD, FACC, FHRS, is the director of clinical cardiac electrophysiology at the Lifespan Cardiovascular Institute and an assistant professor of medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

Dr. Philbin brings more than 20 years of experience to the management of heart rhythm disorders, including complex atrial and ventricular ablations, as well as cardiac device implantation. He is board-certified in cardiovascular diseases and clinical cardiac electrophysiology.

Dr. Philbin received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society at Yale, where he also received the Harry Burr Ferris Prize for outstanding research. He completed his internal medicine residency and fellowships in cardiovascular medicine and clinical cardiac electrophysiology at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Dr. Philbin chairs the Board of Governors of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), sits on the ACC’s Board of Trustees, and serves as the college’s secretary. He has held leadership positions in a number of other professional organizations, including the Governing Council of the New Hampshire Medical Society. His peers selected him as a New Hampshire Top Doctor annually from 2017 through 2020.

Dr. Philbin’s research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and he has presented at national and international conferences.