Clyde W. Yancy

In April 2009, the American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association published a focused update of their guidelines for the diagnosis and management of heart failure in adults. Clyde W. Yancy chaired the writing committee. The document set the standard treatment path for a condition that affects millions of Americans, and Yancy's leadership of it came in the same year he took office as president of the American Heart Association.

Yancy was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1958. He earned his bachelor's degree at Southern University, a historically Black university in his hometown, in 1978, and his medical degree at Tulane University in 1982. He trained in internal medicine and cardiology at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas.

After leadership work at Baylor, where he was medical director of the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute, Yancy joined Northwestern University in 2011 as chief of cardiology. He has also served as the Feinberg School of Medicine's vice dean for diversity and inclusion, and holds the Magerstadt professorship. His research has addressed heart failure, hypertension, cardiomyopathy and racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular disease.

The American Heart Association records that he volunteered with the organization from 1989 onward and served as its president from 2009 to 2010. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2016. Northwestern's announcement described his work across patient care, investigation and teaching. In 2021, the association gave him its Chairman's Award.

Yancy has also spoken about who gets the opportunity to enter medicine. In a January 2021 JAMA interview, he argued that medical-school admissions should recognize compassion and commitment alongside academic competence. His discussion connects the responsibilities of a physician with the challenge of widening access to medical education. In a field where the people treating heart disease do not always resemble the communities that carry its heaviest burden, that argument has been a consistent part of his career.

At Northwestern, the argument has an institutional address: as vice dean for diversity and inclusion, Yancy oversees the side of the medical school where those admissions decisions and that culture are shaped.