Prof Raj Thakkar

PCCS President and CKD representative, Primary care cardiovascular society, GP Primary care cardiology lead, Oxford HIN Honorary Visiting Professor, Cardiff University Medical School, National EAGs for lipids and HF/HVD, NHSE National primary care workstream co-lead - cardiac transformation programme, NHSE UK Clinical Director, Healthy.io and Board observer, British Society of Heart Failure

Raj trained at University College London where he achieved a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and completed his medical degree in 1999. He went on to a GP training programme in the Oxford deanery during which time he completed postgraduate membership exams of both the Royal College of General Practitioners and Physicians. Raj went on to win the national GP enterprise award in his division. He also completed an enhanced GP registrar post in cardiology.  

Raj’s varied roles have included working as a GP partner since 2004, Clinical Commissioning Director in planned care, Cardiac Lead for Thames Valley Strategic Clinical Network, primary care cardiology lead for the Oxford Health Innovation Network (HIN) and atrial fibrillation champion for NHSIQ Thames Valley. He is also on the national expert advisory group for heart failure and valve disease and is currently the national primary care workstream co-lead for the cardiac transformation programme (NHSE). Raj sits on the editorial board for the British Journal of Cardiology.  

Raj has worked as a presenter on BBC Radio and is a medical writer, lecturer, speaker, and advisor. He has written and published over 200 articles and several books including the MIMS consultation guide which won the BMA book of the year award in the category of medicine in 2012. He has achieved two atrial fibrillation pioneer awards, was a national finalist for GP of the year in 2017 and a national HSJ finalist, 2019 for his work in atrial fibrillation. 

Dr Jim Moore

Past President of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society, GP, GPSI Cardiology, Gloucestershire

Dr Moore is a GP in Gloucestershire with a special interest in Cardiovascular Medicine and Past President of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society, spearheading significant changes in this organisation. He lectures extensively across the UK.

He has been heavily involved in National CVD advisory groups, guidelines and working parties. He was a member of the NICE Chronic Heart Failure in Adults Guideline committee (2016-2018) and was a board member of British Society for Heart Failure.

Dr Moore has provided cardiovascular clinical support to local commissioning organisations for over two decades and more recently to Cardiac Networks in the South-West. He is currently Clinical Co-Lead (Primary Care) for the West of England Integrated Cardiac Clinical Network.

Dr Moore is the National Clinical Co- Lead (Primary Care) for the National Cardiac Transformation Programme which has included working closely on NHSE initiatives such as Managing Heart Failure @Home and more recently chaired a group that developed the National (NHSE) guidance for the Virtual Ward care for people with heart failure (in publication).

He has been involved in the establishment and subsequent development of the community-based Gloucestershire Heart Failure service since its inception in 2003 where he continues to work as a GPSI.

Dr Ana Martinez-Naharro

Consultant Cardiologist

Dr Ana Martinez-Naharro’s cardiology training and experience spans two different countries in five teaching hospitals.

Over the last few years, she has developed her expertise in multi-modality cardiac imaging across a broad spectrum of pathologies. Finally, she undertook a Clinical Research Fellowship at the National Amyloidosis Centre, University College London, to strengthen her intellectual and practical research skills, applying CMR to the evaluation of novel therapies in cardiac amyloidosis, culminating in the award of a PhD.

During her PhD, Dr Ana Martinez-Naharro investigated the role of Cardiac MRI, particularly T1 mapping and extracellular volume fraction for AL and ATTR cardiac amyloidosis, with particular interest in tracking changes over time after treatment. This work of this PhD led to a number of publications, presentations, and awards at national and international meetings.

Dr Ana Martinez-Naharro is currently a Consultant Cardiologist with specialist interest in cardiovascular MRI at the Royal Free Hospital & National Amyloidosis Centre.

Beverley Bostock

PCCS President Elect, Advanced Nurse Practitioner, Mann Cottage Surgery and Editor in Chief, Practice Nurse Journal

Beverley is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner in general practice in Gloucestershire and an Editor in Chief of Practice Nurse journal.  She qualified as an RGN at St George’s Hospital London and gained a BSc in Professional Nursing Studies after completing 2 years of an advanced clinical practice MSc at Wolverhampton University.  She is an Independent Nurse Prescriber and holds an MSc in Respiratory Care and an MA in Medical Ethics and Law.

Beverley’s other qualifications include a Post Graduate Award in Diabetes Therapeutics from Warwick University. 

Beverley has extensive educational experience developing modules in diabetes and CVD for an Open University-affiliated organisation and is an Expert Witness for a clinical negligence company.  She has been a Queen’s Nurse since 2015, a title which is given to nurses who have demonstrated a high level of commitment to patient care and nursing practice.

Beverley is a council member for the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society and has worked on the Implementation Steering Group of Public Health England’s CVDPREVENT project and Oxford AHSN’s ‘Prevention of CVD during the pandemic’ guidance.  She has also been a Visiting Lecturer in behaviour change at Imperial College London for the MSc in Preventive Cardiology. 

Prof Derek Connolly

Consultant Cardiologist and Director of R&D at Birmingham City Hospital

Derek is a Consultant Cardiologist at Birmingham City Hospital, Birmingham UK and holds a honorary academic positions at both the University of Birmingham Institute of cardiovascular sciences and at Aston University medical School. Derek trained in Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and San Diego where he was a Carnegie Scholar. Derek has a first class degree in Pharmacology from the University of Edinburgh where he was the Brunton medallist and Keasbey Bursary holder. Derek’s PhD in molecular cardiology is from the University of Cambridge. Derek is the Chief or Primary Investigator of multiple large trials in Cardiovascular medicine. Derek developed one of the UKs first primary angioplasty programmes, and one of the UKs largest cardiac CT programmes. He has been a council member of the PCCS since it's refoundation.

Prof Clare Taylor

Professor of General Practice at the University of Birmingham

Clare Taylor is Professor of General Practice at the University of Birmingham and a GP in the NHS. Her research focuses on earlier diagnosis and improving prognosis for people with heart failure in primary care. She has received grant and fellowship funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Wellcome Trust, and British Heart Foundation. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in high impact journals, including British Medical Journal and European Heart Journal, and her research has informed international heart failure guidelines. She also held senior leadership positions at the Royal College of General Practitioners as Chair of their Associates in Training Committee and Lead of the First5 initiative. Clare was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to General Practice in 2015.

Dr Kim Williams

Endowed Professor of Health Equility and Chairman of department of Medicine at Univeristy of Louisville. 

Dr. Kim Allan Williams, Sr., is the Endowed Professor of Health Equity and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at University of Louisville (UofL).  He originates from the South Side of Chicago and transitioned from the inner-city Chicago Public Schools to the College of the University of Chicago (UC), where he majored in biology (AB’75).  He earned four Maroon varsity tennis letters, playing number one singles for his last three years, and subsequently taught and played tennis professionally.  He trained at UC’s Pritzker School of Medicine (MD’79), internal medicine at Emory University (1979-82), and back to UC for Cardiology (1982-85), Clinical Pharmacology (1984-85), and Nuclear Medicine (1984-86).  He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Nuclear Medicine, Nuclear Cardiology, and Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.

Dr. Williams began his academic leadership as UC faculty (1986) and was promoted to Professor of Medicine and Radiology in 2003.  He became the Dorothy Susan Timmis Professor and Chief, Division of Cardiology at Wayne State University in 2010, and was the James B. Herrick Professor and Chief of Cardiology at Rush University (2013-22).  He also served as Rush’s Associate Dean for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (2020-22) until his appointment as Chairman of Medicine at UofL in 2022.

He has served as President of the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC), and as Chairman of the Board of the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC).  His career has focused on advocacy for national nutrition education, eradication of national and international health care disparities, improved healthcare access, overall health system reform, sustainable health care financing and increased access to advanced cardiac imaging.  Dr. Williams has been a delegate for cardiology to the AMA for over 20 years and has served as a consultant for the FDA and CMS. He is active on the Task Force advising the 2022 White House Conference on Nutrition, Health, and Hunger. 

He was the founder of the Urban Cardiology Initiative in Detroit, Michigan, aiming to reduce ethnic heart care disparities, and continued these community-based efforts in Chicago at Rush, including the H.E.A.R.T. program (Helping Everyone Assess Risk Today), screening for heart disease, intervening with education, nutrition, and lifestyle changes.  At University of Louisville, he transitioned the H.E.A.R.T. program to include diagnostic testing for risk assessment (Helping Everyone Address Risk Today). 

He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention (https://ijdrp.org/index.php/ijdrp). He is an internationally recognized author and speaker with over 1300 original research manuscripts, book chapters, editorial and guideline publications, online resources, movies, and lectures, most recently on the topics of cardionutrition and health equity. 

He has been perennially named in America’s Top Doctors and has received multiple national and international awards including lifetime achievement recognition from ABC (Daniel D. Savage Award), ASNC (Mario Verani Lecturer), National Lipid Association (Lifetime Membership Award), the German Cardiac Society (Gold Key Recipient and Keynote Lecturer) and the Australia New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine for over 20 consecutive years of Keynote Lectures (2002 to 2022).

Dr Nick Gall

Consultant Cardiologist (Arrhythmias and Neurocardiology) and Honorary Senior Lecturer, KCL

Nick is a consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist specializing particularly in neurocardiology – the interface between neurology and cardiology. This involves the investigation and treatment of dizzy spells and loss of consciousness, where causes can be cardiological, neurological or neuropsychiatric. He also manages a range of autonomic conditions including postural tachycardia syndrome and inappropriate sinus tachycardia although the more significant autonomic problems are managed through autonomic neurology. He has spoken at conferences around the world on cardiological, arrhythmic and syncope subjects. He has published widely in the area. He runs, with colleagues, the successful London Syncope meetings and the PoTS masterclasses. He is medical adviser to the charities STARS, Medical Detection Dogs and HMSA and is patron to POTS-UK.

Prof Azfar Zaman

Consultant Cardiologist and Professor of Cardiology at Newcastle University

Professor Zaman was appointed in 2001 as Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at Freeman Hospital, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Professor of Cardiology at Newcastle University, 2013.

His postgraduate training in cardiology was completed at regional centres in Leeds, London (Royal London, Barts and London Chest Hospitals) and at the University Hospital Wales, Cardiff . In 1998 Professor Zaman was a Fulbright Scholar and British Heart Foundation International Fellow at Mount Sinai Medical Centre, New York.

Since 2001 Professor Zaman has been the Clinical Lead for Coronary Intervention and Director of the Cardiac Catheter Laboratories and in 2012 was appointed Specialty Group Lead for Cardiovascular Research to lead clinical trials activity in the Network. His clinical research interest is in atherothrombosis in patients with diabetes mellitus.

Dr Rani Khatib

Consultant Pharmacist in Cardiology and Cardiovascular Research.

Dr Khatib belongs to the Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine (LICAMM), Faculty of Medicine and Health. A Visiting Associate Professor with a wealth of teaching and research experience contributing to the education of physicians, pharmacists, nurses, midwives and other healthcare professionals at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

At Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, he leads on the cardiology medicines and risk optimisation agenda across the secondary and primary care pathways in Leeds. He is an independent prescriber with direct patient responsibility.

He leads on the delivery of the following multidisciplinary medicines optimisation clinics:

• Post Myocardial Infarction Medicines Optimisation Clinics
• Heart Failure Virtual Medicines Optimisation Clinic
• Innovative Medicines Clinic - PCSK9 Inhibitors and statin intolerance
• Advanced Cardiology Medicines Optimison Clinic
• Cardiometabolic Post MI Clinics 

Rani is well published, holds several research grants, principal investigator and co-investigator of several trials with specific interest in medicine adherence and medicines and risk optimisation in cardiology.

Lead author of the NICE endorsed, NHS England national lipids management and statin intolerance pathways. 

Lead author and developer of the MYMEDS tool, for assessing medicines adherence barriers among patients with post-myocardial infarction.