PHILADELPHIA — Paul J. Mather, MD, a cardiologist and a professor of Clinical Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named the American Heart Association’s (AHA) 2020 Physician of the Year.
The annual award is presented to a practicing physician who has rendered outstanding contributions to advancing the AHA’s mission of building healthier lives, free of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Mather, who was twice president for AHA’s regional boards of directors, will receive the award at the Gold Heart Awards Luncheon on October 28 in Plano, Texas.
“I am very honored to receive this award from the American Heart Association, as it recognizes the work my colleagues and I have been doing out in the community, meeting patients where they are. This pandemic—which has exacerbated deep-seated disparities and social fractures—shows how we all need to be agents of change,” Mather said. “There are so many unheralded people in all walks of life quietly doing the right thing. These are the true visionaries and heroes whose work may be far from the limelight but whose impact will be great.”
A cardiologist who specializes in heart failure and cardiac transplantation, Mather first volunteered with the AHA in 1993. Over the years, he has spearheaded regional and local initiatives to help raise awareness of heart healthy behaviors and increase access to preventative health care resources, particularly for vulnerable and underserved populations. In collaboration with the AHA, Mather launched a health and wellness event series at a church in West Philadelphia in which a team of Penn cardiologists, nurses, and trainees offered blood pressure screenings and provided guidance on how participants could improve their cardiovascular health through exercise and diet.
“As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.’ Your zip code should not be more predictive of your health outcomes than your genetic code,” Mather said. “We must all work together and now is always the right time to address these inequalities.”
Mather also served as a strong advocate of the city of Philadelphia’s sugary beverage tax, arguing that chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, are exacerbated by overweight and obesity. Since the tax was implemented, research shows a significant decrease in monthly soda consumption among adults and daily sugar intake among children.
His research covers a variety of cardiology-related topics, include heart failure, heart transplantation, and cardiac imaging. Mather has served as a member of a number of organizations, including the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation, where he was on the Heart Failure Council and the steering committee of the Mechanical Circulatory Support Database Committee. He is also a member of the American Society of Transplantation.
Mather, who joined Penn in 2016, earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Temple University Hospital, where he also completed a fellowship in cardiovascular diseases.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
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