Chairman, Division of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
Dr. James Young is Chairman, Division of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation; Professor of Medicine and Academic Chairman of the Department of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University; and a Medical Director of the Cleveland Clinic Kaufman Center for Heart Failure. He holds the George and Linda Kaufman Chair and is the newly named Study Chairman of the NIH, FDA, and CMS Interagency Registry for Mechanical Assist Circulatory Support (INTERMACS). He has a joint appointment to the Multi-organ Transplant Center. Dr. Young recently served as Acting Director of the Bakken Heart-Brain Institute (BHBI) and remains an active member of the Steering Committee for the BHBI. Dr. Young is board certified as a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine as well as the subspecialty of Cardiovascular Disease.
Dr. Young spent his early years in the San Francisco Bay Area, subsequently attending the University of Kansas where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in biology. He matriculated to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where he was awarded his Medical Doctor degree cum laude and was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society. Dr. Young remained in Houston at the Baylor Affiliated Hospital System to complete his clinical training as an intern and resident, becoming a Professor of Medicine with Tenure in1992. He was the Clinical Coordinator and Scientific Director for Dr. Michael E. DeBakey’s Multi-organ Transplant Center at The Methodist Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. He subsequently relocated to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio, in 1995 when he became Head of the Section of Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant Medicine in the Department of Cardiovascular Disease. In 1998 Dr. Young, along with his surgical colleague Dr. Patrick McCarthy, created the Kaufman Center for Heart Failure at the Cleveland Clinic and Dr. Young now serves as one of its Medical Directors.
Dr. Young’s clinical research activities began during his residency and fellowship training when he was a Lipid Research Clinic (LRC) physician. He subsequently focused his efforts on heart failure and cardiac transplant therapeutics including early experiences with dopamine receptor agonists, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, angiotensin receptor blockers, many new immunosuppressants, and a variety of parenteral inotropes and vasodilators. He has collaborated extensively with his basic science research associates in the Kaufman Center for Heart Failure and Multi-Organ Transplant Center on ‘bridging’ and ‘translational’ research focused primarily on the molecular biology of cardiac remodeling, allograft arteriopathy, and transplanted heart rejection. Dr. Young served as the United States Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator for the HOPE, RESOLVED, SPICE, VMAC, MIRACLE-ICD, ONTARGET, TRENSCEND, and CHARM multi-center clinical trials.
He has published almost 500 manuscripts and abstracts and several textbooks. Professionally, Dr. Young is most proud of his contributions to the development and administration of organ procurement programs, his efforts to secure recognition for the newly emerging cardiology subspecialty of “Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant Medicine”, and his collaborations with basic and clinical scientists.