Alan T. HirschAlan T. Hirsch, M.D. is Professor of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis, Minnesota.' He has always maintained a dual focus on individual vascular health and community vascular healt.'Dr. Hirsch received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and attended medical school at the University of California in San Francisco. He completed his internship and residency in the department of medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals and at the University of California Hospitals in San Francisco. Dr. Hirsch also completed a cardiovascular pharmacology research fellowship at the Cardiovascular Research Institute and Clinical Pharmacology Section, University of California in San Francisco; and a physiology fellowship at the Department of Physiology and Molecular Biology, Harvard Medical School.Dr. Hirsch’s research interests include the evaluation of new medications and new methods to treat peripheral arterial disease.' He also evaluates community-based peripheral arterial disease detection methods, treatments to reduce the “systemic” risk of heart attack and stroke, as well as new claudication treatments. He is a principal investigator for the design and performance of single-site and multi-center clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of medical treatments for vascular disorders. He is the chair of the PARTNERS database; serves on the USA steering committee and international publications committee of the REACH Registry; and is chair of the NHLBI-sponsored CLEVER trial that is evaluating the benefit, risk and health economics of supervised exercise vs. endovascular vs. optimal medical therapies for individuals with PAD and claudication.'Dr. Hirsch has provided leadership to a wide array of professional healthcare associations. He has served as founding member and Past-President of the Society for Vascular Medicine; is a Fellow of the American Heart Association (AHA) Council on Epidemiology and Prevention, and serves on the Steering Committee of the Interdisciplinary Working Group on Atherosclerotic Peripheral Vascular Disease. He has chaired the intersocietal Writing Committee which has recently published the “ACC-AHA Guidelines for the Management of Patients with Peripheral Arterial Disease”, as he has created the new intersocietal “PAD Guideline Implementation Task Force” to best disseminate the guideline.' He has recently served as the founding chair of the interdisciplinary, not-for-profit, “Peripheral Arterial Disease Coalition” which has co-developed the new national “PAD Public Awareness Campaign” with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, that was launched in September, 2006.'' Read More Read Less