Javier E. Lopez, M.D.
Javier E. López is a cardiologist and Professor in Cardiovascular Medicine at University of California, Davis. He is the medical director of cardiac rehabilitation at UC Davis, and the cardiology clinic at the Imani student-run free clinic. He directs the Hypertension Digital Health Navigator Program from the Center for Reducing Health Disparities (CRHD) currently running at Imani, Tepati and Knights Landing student-run clinics. His clinical interest is in developing personalized rehabilitation and prevention programs that advance cardiovascular health with an emphasize in hardly reach populations.
López received his medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He completed a Sarnoff Fellowship in cardiovascular medicine with Cardiologist Carlin Long at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) before moving to the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas for his internal medicine residency. Afterward, he returned to UCSF to complete his postgraduate research training as a research fellow in the laboratory of Paul Simpson. López finished his clinical cardiology training (2010) and received a master’s degree in applied sciences (2012) focused on translational science at UC Davis before joining the faculty in 2014.
His basic research interest is to better understand how organs and cells within organs coordinate their response after injury and provide resilience from disease. He is using clinical features, blood transcriptomics, single cell phenotyping, and multi-organ molecular imaging to define biological maps of resilience post myocardial infarction. His clinical research is focused on improving translation and implementation of cardiovascular prevention and rehabilitation for patients living with heart failure, diabetes and heart attack. He is a multiple Principal Investigator of the NHLBI-funded HeartShare study on heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, a national consortium studying novel therapeutic targets for this condition. He is also co-PI of the psychosocial stressors and exposomics on CV health in underserved multi-ethnic populations in the Northern California project, funded by the AHA-SFRN Centre on Biological Pathways of Chronic Psychosocial Stressors on Cardiovascular Health program in partnership with the California State University in Sacramento. He is also co-I of the Supportive Training After Cardiac Rehabilitation Including Virtual Engagement: The STRIVE Study where he is the site PI at UC Davis and overseeing the study-wide recruitments at multiple sites in rural areas of Northern California.
