Robert Califf, M.D., Consultant for the ABC News OnCall+ Heart Disease Center
— -- Dr. Califf was born in Anderson, South Carolina, in 1951 and attended high school in Columbia, S.C., where he was a member of the 1969 AAAA South Carolina Championship basketball team.
He graduated from Duke University, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in 1973 and from Duke University Medical School in 1978, where he was selected for Alpha Omega Alpha. He performed his internship and residency at the University of California at San Francisco and his fellowship in cardiology at Duke University. He is board-certified in internal medicine (1984) and cardiology (1986) and is a master of the American College of Cardiology (2006).
He is currently Vice Chancellor for Clinical Research, Director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute (DTMI), and Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. For 10 years he was Director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, a premiere academic research organization in the world. He is the editor-in-chief of Elsevier's American Heart Journal, the oldest cardiovascular specialty journal. He has been an author or coauthor of more than 800 peer-reviewed journal articles and is a contributing editor for theheart.org, an online information resource for academic and practicing cardiologists. He was recently acknowledged as one of the 10 most cited authors in the field of medicine by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
Dr. Califf led the DCRI for many of the best-known clinical trials in cardiovascular disease. With an annual budget of over $100 million, the DCRI has more than 900 employees and collaborates extensively with government agencies, the medical-products industry, and academic partners around the globe. In cooperation with his colleagues from the Duke Databank for Cardiovascular Disease, Dr. Califf has written extensively about the clinical and economic outcomes of chronic heart disease. He is considered an international leader in the fields of health outcomes, quality of care, and medical economics.
Dr. Califf's role as Director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute, which is funded in part by an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), includes service as co-chairman of the Principal Investigators Steering Committee of the CTSA.
Dr. Califf has served on the Cardiorenal Advisory Panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Pharmaceutical Roundtable of the Institute of Medicine (IOM). He served on the IOM committees that recommended Medicare coverage of clinical trials as well as the removal of ephedra from the market and the IOM's Committee on Identifying and Preventing Medication Errors. He is currently a member of the IOM Forum in Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation and the Science Board of the United States Food and Drug Administration. He is the director of the coordinating center for the Centers for Education & Research on Therapeutics (CERTs), a public/private partnership among the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the FDA, academia, the medical-products industry, and consumer groups. This partnership focuses on research and education that will advance the best use of medical products.
Dr. Califf has been married to Lydia Carpenter since 1974, and they have three children -- Sharon Califf Boozer, a graduate of Elon College; Sam, a graduate student at the University of Colorado-Boulder; and Tom, a recent graduate of Duke University -- and one grandchild. Dr. Califf enjoys golf, basketball, and listening to music.
Dr. Califf is a paid consultant for the ABCNews.com OnCall+ Heart Disease Center. Additional services provided by Larry A. Allen, M.D., E. Marc Jolicoeur, M.D., Jeffrey S. Berger, M.D., and Jonathan P. Piccini, M.D.