Christopher M. O’Connor, MD, MACC, FHFSA, FHFA was named the 2023 HFSA Distinguished Leadership Award winner.

Dr. Christopher O’Connor is the President of the Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute, a 5-hospital system that serves over 2 million people in the Northern Virginia / Washington, DC area. He is a Professor of Medicine in Cardiology at Duke University, and was previously the chief of the Division of Cardiology and director of the Duke Heart Center. Under his leadership, Duke Heart Center was ranked the #4 Heart Center in the country by U.S. News and World Report. Dr. O’Connor, who first joined the Duke faculty in 1989, is an internationally recognized cardiologist and authority on heart failure. His clinical investigations have dramatically expanded the understanding of numerous aspects of cardiac function and dysfunction, including the influence of depression and stress on heart failure patients. His research has led to profound insights into both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic therapies to treat heart failure and has had a direct impact on the lives of thousands of patients.

Dr. O’Connor was one of the first investigators to lead initiatives to study therapies in acute decompensated heart failure, which has led to a number of novel therapeutic interventions. He was the Principal Investigator of the landmark HF-ACTION clinical trial, which studied exercise training in more than 2,000 heart failure patients, and eventually led to a change in the international guidelines, change in the national reimbursement of cardiac rehabilitation for heart failure patients by CMS, and validation of two novel biomarkers that were later approved by the FDA. Dr. O’Connor was an editor of the textbook, Managing Acute Decompensated Heart Failure, the first one published on the topic. Founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure. Dr. O’Connor was elected as Master of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and the Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA). He has served on over 90 CEC and DSMC committees in 25 years and served as Chair or Co-Chair on more than 15 of these committees. He has an extensive record of successful mentorship of trainees and has published over 890 manuscripts. He has served as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI for over 20 national and international clinical trials with an extensive record of NIH/NHLBI and industry grants. He serves in national leadership roles in the HFSA and ACC, and has served as President of the HFSA. His commitment to mentoring students, residents, and fellows at Duke has been recognized with the Joseph C. Greenfield Research Mentoring Award in 2006 and the 2013 Research Mentoring Award for clinical science research by the Schools of Medicine and Nursing. In 2018, he received the University Of Maryland School Of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Award.

Dr. O’Connor earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a medical degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He went on to Duke to complete an internship, residency, chief residency, and cardiology fellowship.