After practicing cardiology and being an advocate for women’s health for over 30 years, Dr. Stacey E. Rosen recently stepped into a new position as the 2025-2026 volunteer president for the American Heart Association.
“The mission of the American Heart Association is to be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives,” Rosen said. “It’s an organization that is truly looking holistically on how we can impact on heart and brain health, but in a way that focuses on longer, healthier lives, not just not just treating disease, but really focusing on wellness.”
Rosen is also a professor of cardiology at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University/Northwell Health, the executive director of the Katz Institute for Women’s Health and the senior vice president for Women’s Health at Northwell. Rosen’s extensive amount of work and research in the cardiology field is what led her to assuming her new position as volunteer president.
Rosen has focused much of her time in the field of cardiology to advocating for women’s health and working toward bridging the gender gap in medical research.
“Much of my cardiovascular career has been focused on looking at heart and brain health through a sex and gender lens. Women were historically [believed] not to get heart disease, and so they were left out of research trials,” Rosen said. “And over decades, we realized that women, in fact, get heart disease. In fact, for 25 years, more women were dying in the United States from heart disease than men, and until we started looking at the unique issues related to women’s health, we continued to have poor outcomes … My focus this year is going to be continuing the legacy of a focus on improving health outcomes for women.”
Through her years of previous research, the work the American Heart Association has already completed and the work they will continue to complete, Rosen envisions “a future where sex and gender differences are foundational in all research and clinical work.”
