Awardee thrives at intersection of innovation and care
"Not molecules, but markets." That's how cardiologist and health economist Dr. Dhruv Kazi frames his work as a champion of the American Heart Association around the globe.
Kazi's worldview is shaped by his experience educating and working in settings with widely varying resources in 19 hospitals and on four continents. Dually trained in cardiovascular medicine and health economics, he has set himself — and the AHA — an ambitious goal: to figure out how to provide the best care at the lowest cost for the most people.
Kazi is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, associate director of the Smith Center for Outcomes Research and director of the Cardiac Critical Care Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
"In the field of medicine, inventing a new device or discovering something fundamental to human biology is considered sexy, whereas solving this intractable problem of how we deliver high-quality affordable care isn't," said Kazi, co-chair of the AHA's International Committee. "But of what use are these scientific breakthroughs if they cannot reach everyone who could benefit from them?
"Affordability is at the heart of public health. What the AHA has done is to give me a platform to find solutions," he said.
For his extraordinary efforts, Kazi will receive the Ron Haddock International Impact Award on June 17 during the AHA's National Volunteer Awards ceremony in Plano, Texas.
The award is named for the association's 2012-13 board chairperson. It was Haddock's vision to expand and strengthen the AHA's partnerships with health organizations internationally.
Kazi has helped bring that vision to fruition, driving global initiatives across four themes: scientific collaboration, professional education, quality improvement and equitable health. These priority areas form the pillars of the association's Second Century international agenda, which Kazi helped develop, and anchor AHA partnerships in more than 100 countries worldwide.
"He helped navigate the post-pandemic expansion of our support to health care systems, patients and providers around the world," said John Meiners, chief of mission-aligned businesses and health care solutions for the association.
Growing up in Bombay, India, Kazi experienced the striking disparities he's spent his career trying to understand and reduce. "Even as a child, there was no escaping the uncomfortable truth that India was simultaneously grappling with diseases of deprivation and maladies of excess," he said. "There was plenty of high-quality health care available, but often only to those who could afford to pay for it.
"My parents, through their words and actions, taught me that each of us had an important role to play in improving the lives of others. They insisted that I understand that inequities were pervasive, but they weren't inevitable."
Kazi earned his medical degree at the University of Mumbai before completing his residency and chief residency in internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and his cardiology fellowship at the University of California, San Diego. Interspersed with his clinical training, he also obtained master of sciences degrees at the London School of Economics and at Stanford University.
While at Stanford, Kazi developed heartMAP, a program that used low-cost digital technology to track the use of blood thinners among low-literacy patients who had undergone open-heart surgery. The lessons he learned from that experience — about how to design and scale patient-centered solutions in low-resource settings — have stuck with him.
The low-cost, data-driven program typifies the kind of innovation Kazi champions, according to his committee co-chair, businessman Jim Postl.
"He has shown incredible vision about what the AHA can become internationally. He has spearheaded exciting initiatives focused on lower-income countries and markets," Postl said.
As a cardiologist and economist, Kazi prizes what he describes as "yes, and …" approaches to health care problems.
"A big part of our roles as leaders is to find the balance between innovation and affordability," he said. "Yes, we're going to create systems that support innovation in health care. At the same time, we must create financial systems and incentives to ensure that people who can benefit from innovation have access to it."
Kazi views the turbulent state of international relations pragmatically. "Global partnerships are countercyclical to economy and politics. When the economy takes a nosedive or political headwinds push nations toward isolationism, our engagement with partners in other countries becomes even more important," he said of the AHA's deep global connections.
"The biggest problems in society do not recognize national borders. They cannot be solved by working in national silos. Our success as a species requires international collaboration," he said.
"And to the extent that evolution has wired us for survival, I remain optimistic that we will continue to work together to solve the most pressing challenges of our time."
