Hypertension Fellowship

The UT Southwestern Medical Center, Hypertension Section has a commitment to training of hypertension specialists. Currently, there are fewer than five programs in the U.S. that are dedicated to training individuals to have expertise in management of resistant hypertension and clinical translational research in hypertension.

Hypertension continues to be a major public health problem and a major risk factor for cardiovascular and renal diseases. Despite the enormous advances in antihypertensive-drug therapy over the past five decades, the number of people with uncontrolled hypertension has continued to rise in the U.S. Although most hypertensive patients can be effectively managed by primary care providers including internists, family practitioners and other providers, a fraction of the hypertensive population requires specialized expertise for optimal care due to a variety of conditions. This is now recognized in national and international guidelines (JNC-7, WHO-ISH) developed for the care of hypertensive patients. It has become apparent that the increasingly overburdened primary care practitioner, facing a broad variety of medical problems in daily practice, can be helped by experts functioning as a resource for advice.

Our Section offers considerable depth and breadth in both basic and clinical aspects of hypertension research. Fellows are exposed to a wide range of state-of-the-art concepts and approaches in basic research, ranging from cell and molecular biology to integrative mouse physiology. Opportunities for involvement and training in clinical research span the gamut from human cardiovascular physiology to clinical trials to epidemiology and public health. With substantial funding from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, we have established at UT Southwestern a Clinical Cardiovascular Research Center that provides fellows with access to a large population database (The Dallas Heart Study). 

Goals and Objectives

The purpose of hypertension fellowship program at UT Southwestern is:

• to have the fellow develop sufficient clinical expertise in clinical hypertension to become a clinical hypertension specialist
• to provide each fellow with a tailored exposure to either clinical or basic hypertension research
• to train fellows to become physician educators who will contribute to education and training of colleagues, residents, and physicians in the community in order to improve hypertension control rate overall.