David C. Goff

David C. Goff, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., is the Deputy Director for Precision Medicine and Data Science, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health. In this role, Dr. Goff is responsible for advancing the Institute's mission and vision for harnessing cutting-edge data science approaches to drive precision prevention, detection, and treatment of heart, lung, blood, and sleep conditions to improve community health and patient care outcomes.

From 2016 to 2024, Dr. Goff was the Director, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences (DCVS) at the NHLBI. During this time, he leadsled a diverse team of scientists and administrators committed to turning discovery into cardiovascular health. He led development of a new Strategic Vision Implementation Plan for DCVS that led to the launch of several new strategic initiatives including HeartShare and the Accelerating Medicines Partnership® (AMP®) for Heart Failure, efforts to deeply phenotype and deconstruct the syndrome of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction to set the stage for precision trials. He also led the launch of the ENRICH initiative designed to test an approach to enhance the cardiovascular health of pregnant women and their offspring, and two new observational cohort studies focused on the health of rural Americans and Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. In addition to serving as the Director of DCVS, he served as NHLBI's executive sponsor for the TransOmics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program and the BioData Catalyst program, NHLBI's cloud-based data science ecosystem. He also served as a Senior Scientific Program Director for RECOVER, NIH's Long COVID program.

Prior to joining the NHLBI, he served as Dean and Professor of Epidemiology in the Colorado School of Public Health and as Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Prevention at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. He received an MD from the University of North Carolina and a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health. He trained in internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He is an elected member of the American Epidemiological Society, and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American Heart Association. His research interests include the epidemiology and prevention of heart disease and stroke with a focus on issues related to high blood pressure, diabetes, and dyslipidemia. He has published over 300 manuscripts, book chapters, and other scientific reports. He has served in a variety of leadership roles in multiple NIH-, CDC-, and AHA-funded studies and committees. He has directed the Ten-Day Seminar on the Epidemiology and Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease since 2000. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, President of the Board of Directors for the Denver Metro Division of the American Heart Association, Chair of the Council on Epidemiology and Prevention for the American Heart Association, and Chair of the Council on Quality of Care and Outcomes Research for the American Heart Association.

The major focus of his research has been on developing, testing, and implementing better strategies for promoting cardiovascular health and preventing CVD. This work has involved 5 aspects, including etiologic research, efficacy trials, quality of care research, implementation research, and evidence synthesis.

Etiologic research: He served as a Co-Investigator for several NHLBI-funded observational studies, including MESA, IRAS and ARIC. His most recent efforts focused on the CARDIA study, for which he served as Chair of the Steering Committee. CARDIA is studying the maintenance of cardiovascular health and the incidence and progression of cardiovascular disease in a biracial cohort of black and white men and women enrolled in 1985 and followed to date for 30 years. CARDIA has characterized the evolution of health behaviors (including diet and activity), risk factors, subclinical disease markers, and clinical outcomes over this period, and has contributed to understanding the metabolic, genetic, lifestyle, social, and environmental bases of these phenotypes.

Efficacy trials: He contributed to important randomized clinical trials, including ALLHAT, ACCORD, and SPRINT. In ALLHAT, he served at the Coordinating Center as a leader of the Lipid-Lowering Trial and as the primary liaison with the Regional Coordinators. In ACCORD and SPRINT, he served as a Clinical Center Network PI, member of the Steering Committee, and Chair of several subcommittees. In each case, these studies began with important unanswered questions about care for hypertension, dyslipidemia, or diabetes, and the results have influenced clinical care in major ways.

Quality of care and outcomes research: He led several studies designed to test strategies to improve care in clinical practices, including AHA, CDC, and NHLBI-funded grants to test strategies to improve use of statins in coronary heart disease, ACE inhibitors and beta blockers in heart failure, and ATP III and JNC 7 guideline based care in primary care practices. He directed an NHLBI-funded training grant that supported career development of scientists interested in this field.

Implementation and dissemination research: He led the HELP Prevent Diabetes Project, a community-based translation of the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP). At the time, little was known regarding how to translate the expensive DPP into the community. To enhance feasibility and dissemination potential, HELP Prevent Diabetes tested a program that was based in a community resource (a diabetes education program), simplified inclusion and outcome assessments, integrated task shifting of intervention delivery from trained professionals to lay community health workers, and converted the intervention to group delivery. The program showed outstanding cost-effectiveness in the implementation project, and the model is now being evaluated in a dissemination project in NC.

Evidence synthesis and policy development: He participated in efforts to translate evidence into policy. He chaired the Working Group for the Public Health Action Plan to Prevent Heart Attacks and Stroke, and the Risk Assessment Working Group for Cardiovascular Risk Reduction for the NHLBI, ACC, and AHA. He served on the ACC/AHA Performance Measures Task Force, and Hypertension Guideline Committee.

The public URL for my bibliography is https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/david.goff.2/bibliography/5206...