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 Dr. Herman A. Taylor, Jr. heads the Jackson Heart Study (JHS), the largest ever community-based study of cardiovascular disease in African Americans. Findings from the JHS have been published in journals ranging from Nature to The American Journal of Public Health, and the study has been featured in National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. Dr. Taylor has testified about cardiovascular disease prevention and health equity in House and Senate hearings, for the United States Civil Rights Commission, and in briefings for congressional staff.
Championing prevention and health equity is a natural outgrowth of Dr. Taylor's life and work experiences. Born in Birmingham, Ala., Dr. Taylor grew up in a family that valued faith, social justice, and the power of education. He trained as an undergraduate at Princeton and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. After an internship at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Dr. Taylor completed a three-year tour of duty with the National Health Service Corps in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood. The time in Liberty City provided an intimate view of the health issues facing both long-term African American residents and newly arriving Haitian and Cuban refugees, sealing Dr. Taylor's determination to make the fruits of American medicine available to everyone.
Dr. Taylor completed his internal medicine residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a cardiology fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he later joined the faculty. He established clinical and research interests in preventive cardiology, acute coronary syndromes, and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular health. Dr. Taylor became a founding medical director of the UAB Hospital CardioPulmonary Rehabilitation Service and lead investigator on several NIH-funded cardiovascular studies. He also founded Heart to Heart, a non-profit organization that provides cardiac surgical services for children on five continents and improves the skills of providers from the children's home countries.
Dr. Taylor has been named one of the Best Doctors in America by American Health magazine, one of America's Leading Doctors by Black Enterprise magazine, Mentor of the Year by the Student National Medical Association, and the American Heart Association's Physician of the Year. He also received the Award of Excellence from the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the Lou Wooster Public Health Hero Award from the UAB School of Public Health.
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