NEW ORLEANS — Stacey Rosen is a cardiologist who has been coming to American Heart Association meetings for 30 years. Executive director of Northwell’s Katz Institute for Women’s Health, she is also senior vice president of Women’s Health at Northwell, a professor of cardiology at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and she also still sees patients. Now she leads the AHA as volunteer president for 2025-2026.
Both the AHA and medicine have evolved over those last three decades, still developing what in her view is an overdue recognition of fundamental, biological differences between men and women. One turning point came in 1985, when for the first time, more women died of heart disease than men. “I think the minute those mortality curves crossed, it was apparent to us,” she told STAT. “You couldn’t any longer deny that there was something different about women’s heart health. And that we had to do something different.”
