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Temple's Dr. Steven R. Houser is New President-Elect of the American Heart Association

News June 25, 2015

Temple's Dr. Steven R. Houser is New President-Elect of the American Heart AssociationSteven R. Houser, PhD, FAHA, Senior Associate Dean of Research, the Vera J. Goodfriend Endowed Chair of Cardiovascular Research and Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM), has been elected to serve as president-elect of the American Heart Association (AHA), the nation's oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke.

Dr. Houser's one-year term as president-elect begins on July 1 and runs through June 30, 2016. He will then serve a one-year term as President of the AHA beginning on July 1, 2016. Dr. Houser was elected by the AHA Board of Directors.

The AHA's stated mission is to fund innovative research, fight for stronger public health policies and provide critical tools and information to save and improve lives. The AHA includes more than 22.5 million volunteers and supporters.

Dr. Houser is an internationally respected cardiovascular researcher who has been a Temple faculty member for more than three decades. His research group has helped define many fundamental features of the normal cardiac myocyte as well as identified defective molecular and cellular processes that produce abnormal cardiac myocyte function in cardiovascular disease. This group was awarded a five-year, $11.6 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health in 2012 to develop new approaches to prevent, slow or reverse damage to the heart after a heart attack.

Dr. Houser earned his PhD in Physiology and completed a research fellowship at TUSM. He joined the Temple faculty as an Assistant Professor of Physiology in 1979 and was named Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center in 2003 and Chair of Physiology in 2006. He has a long association with the American Heart Association, serving as a board member, Chair of the Research Committee, and President of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Affiliate. He has also served on a number of national AHA committees.

In addition to being Senior Associate Dean of Research, the Vera J. Goodfriend Endowed Chair of Cardiovascular Research and Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center, Dr. Houser is also Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology and Professor of Medicine at TUSM.