Cardiovascular Risk Factors - Lifestyle Modifications.

Dr. Holly Biola is Chief of Family Medicine at Lincoln Community Health Center, where she provides comprehensive primary care and leads clinical and community health initiatives. She also holds an academic appointment in the Duke University School of Medicine, where she collaborates in teaching, research, and community-engaged scholarship.

Dr. James Davis is a practicing physician of Internal Medicine, and serves as the Medical Director for Duke Center for Smoking Cessation, Director of the Duke Smoking Cessation Program and Co-Director of the Duke-UNC Tobacco Treatment Specialist Credentialing Program.  His research focuses on development of new pharmaceutical treatments for smoking cessation.  He is principal investigator on several trials including a study on “adaptive” smoking cessation and several trials on new medications for smoking cessation. The new medications leverage more novel neurobiological mechanisms - NMDA receptor antagonism, nicotinic receptor antagonism, which impact addiction-based learning and cue response. Additionally, Dr. Davis serves as co-investigator on trials on lung cancer screening, e-cigarettes, minor nicotine alkaloids, imaging trials, lung function trials and others. Dr. Davis leads the Duke Smoke-Free Policy Initiative, is co-author on a national  tobacco dependence treatment guideline, and provides training in tobacco dependence treatment for the Duke School of Medicine, Duke Internal Medicine, Family Practice and Psychiatry residency programs.

Neha J. Pagidipati, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and cardiovascular disease prevention specialist.  Since 2011, she has conducted research on cardiometabolic disease prevention, lifestyle modification and weight management.  She is currently an NIH K12 scholar in Implementation and Dissemination Science. 

Dr. Pagidipati is building the Duke Cardiometabolic Disease Prevention Program, which focuses on behavior change and risk factor management in patients with high risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.  The program’s multi-disciplinary team of cardiologists, endocrinologists, nephrologists, and hepatologists will work together to provide coordinated, team-based care to the most high-risk and complex patients in the health system. 

Dr. Pagidipati’s research grants include the COORDINATE-Diabetes Trial, to improve the quality of care for patients with diabetes and cardiovascular disease across the U.S., and QuBBD:  Deep Poisson Methods for Biomedical Time-to-Event and Longitudinal Data.  She served as a study clinician on the large, longitudinal EXSCEL (Exenatide Study of Cardiovascular Event Lowering) trial.  She is currently conducting a nation-wide study of obesity management using real-world data sources, and is a site investigator for the Baseline Health Study in collaboration with Verily Life Sciences. In addition, she is leading a large study within the Duke Health System to study heterogeneity within cardiovascular disease risk and response to weight loss interventions among individuals with obesity. 

Dr. Pagidipati graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.  She completed her internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  During a two-year research fellowship in Global Women’s Health at the Brigham, she obtained an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health and studied cardiovascular disease prevention in women in India.  Dr. Pagidipati completed a four-year cardiology fellowship at the Duke University School of Medicine and served as Chief Research Fellow at the Duke Clinical Research Institute.  In 2017, she became a faculty member of the Duke University School of Medicine School.