Sonja Brune was named the 2020 HFSA Nursing Clinical Excellence Leadership Award winner. Learn more >>

Sonja Brune, MSN, APRN, CCNS, CHFN, AACC realized her passion for improving the outcomes of cardiology’s most vulnerable population prior to graduating with a Master of Science in Nursing in 1999.  Board certified as an Acute-Critical Care Clinical Nurse Specialist and Heart Failure Nurse, she began working as a Heart Failure Advanced Practice Provider in a private cardiology practice and a heart transplant program for years before joining the ranks of the esteemed faculty within UT Health Division of Cardiology as a Heart Failure Specialist in 2007.  Patients in her panel of the UT Advanced Heart Failure Program demonstrate improved outcomes as she empowers them to overcome challenges to self-care, promotes compliance through extensive education and shared decision making, and features the patient as a member of the team rather than a recipient of medical directives.  

In addition to serving as sub-investigator for several ongoing research studies, she is often consulted directly by physicians and other providers in all specialties to manage advanced heart failure.  She is frequently invited to speak to trainees of all levels within the medical school, local and regional conferences where she is often the only non-physician presenter and has appeared in local television news segments as a healthcare expert.  Most recently, her contributions to the development of a heart failure readmission reduction program at a large healthcare system resulted in a decline of readmission rates from > 20% to single digits almost every month since initiation of the program in April 2019.