| Michelle Asha Albert | |
| Workplaces: | University of California, San Francisco Harvard Medical School Howard University, Columbia University |
| Alma Mater: | Haverford College University of Rochester Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health |
Michelle Asha Albert is an American physician who is the Walter A. Haas Lucie-Stern Endowed Chair in Cardiology and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Albert is director of the UCSF Center for the Study of Adversity and Cardiovascular Disease (NURTURE Center). She is president of the American Heart Association. She served as the president of the Association of Black Cardiologists in 2020–2022 and as president of the Association of University Cardiologists (2021–2022). Albert is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigators and the Association of American Physicians.
Albert spent her early childhood in Guyana.[1] [2] She grew up with her grandparents. Whilst Albert initially planned to become an actuary, her career plans changed after her grandfather suddenly died. Her studies of slavery, her experiences in a developing country and losing her grandfather inspired her to become a physician. At the age of fifteen, her family moved to Brooklyn. Albert attended Haverford College, where she studied chemistry and graduated at the age of twenty. She attended medical school at the University of Rochester. Albert moved to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she earned a Master of Public Health.[3] Albert was a cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
After completing her medical residency and chief residency at Columbia University in New York, Albert completed cardiovascular medicine fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Thereafter, she was appointed to the faculty at the Harvard Medical School. She was eventually appointed Associate Professor of Medicine.[4] Albert subsequently served as the Vivian Beaumont Allen Endowed Professor at Howard University. She joined the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco in 2015.
Albert's research considers adversity, health disparities and cardiology. She is a cardiologist and Director of the Center for the Study of Adversity and Cardiovascular Disease at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine where she also serves as Admissions Dean.[5] In particular, she is interested in the social determinants of health, and how an understanding of these can transform the healthcare of global populations. She makes use of inflammatory and thrombotic biomarkers of cardiovascular disease risks, and assesses how these biomarkers vary by demographic or social characteristics. Based on this research, Albert created strategies to limit the risk of cardiovascular disease amongst people from historically marginalized groups.[6]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Albert studied the impact of COVID-19 on heart health, particularly the heart health of Black women.[7] In the United States, the stress that Black people experience due to everyday discrimination contributes to worse cardiovascular health.