Gregg C. Fonarow, MD, director of the Ahmanson-UCLA Cardiomyopathy Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine, has received the 2026 Heart Failure Society of America (HFSA) Lifetime Achievement Award, one of the field’s highest honors. The award recognizes his decades of leadership and transformative contributions to heart failure research, quality improvement, and patient care.
Fonarow has devoted his career to improving how evidence-based therapies are delivered to patients with heart failure. That commitment began at UCLA Health with the cardiac hospitalization atherosclerosis management program (CHAMP), where Fonarow and colleagues demonstrated that a structured hospital-based approach to initiating proven therapies before discharge could dramatically improve adherence and reduce all-cause mortality. The success of that work helped establish the idea that systems of care can save lives and laid the foundation for a career focused on translating scientific evidence into better patient outcomes.
“What I am proudest of is not a single trial or paper but a consistent thread running throughout my career: the conviction that patients should reliably receive the evidence-based, guideline-recommended therapies we know can help them, and that closing the gap between evidence and everyday care is itself a form of discovery,” Fonarow said.
Over the years, Fonarow helped lead several landmark initiatives that reshaped heart failure care nationwide. His work contributed to the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines Program, which now spans more than 3,000 hospitals and has impacted more than 15 million patients. He also played key roles in the ADHERE registry, OPTIMIZE-HF, IMPROVE-HF, and CHAMP-HF, studies and quality improvement efforts that advanced risk assessment, identified measures linked to improved outcomes, and highlighted opportunities to improve the use of guideline-directed medical therapy.
While his scientific achievements have influenced the care of millions of patients, mentorship has been among the most meaningful aspects of his career. Fonarow has mentored more than 200 early-career investigators, helping to train the next generation of cardiovascular researchers and clinicians. “Watching them grow into leaders and make their own mark on the field has been more rewarding than any publication or citation count,” he said.
Fonarow also serves as co-director of UCLA's Preventative Cardiology Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine. He attained the rank of professor of medicine in 2003. He was awarded the Eliot Corday chair in cardiovascular medicine and science in 2003.
