Brett Kissela, MD, Named Chair of Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine

CINCINNATI—Brett Kissela, MD, has been appointed the Albert Barnes Voorheis Chair of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine and UC Health, effective Jan. 1, 2014. Kissela’s appointment is pending approval by the UC Board of Trustees.

Kissela replaces Joseph Broderick, MD, who will be stepping down from the position to focus on his research and clinical duties and on his leadership role as research director with the UC Neuroscience Institute, one of four institutes affiliated with the UC College of Medicine and UC Health. Broderick will continue to serve as a professor in the department. 

"Dr. Kissela has achieved renown as a stroke researcher serving in leadership roles with many major National Institutes of Health-funded studies. He’s also served as vice chair of the department since 2004 and I can think of no one better suited to follow Dr. Broderick’s lengthy term of exceptional leadership than Dr. Kissela,” said Thomas Boat, MD, Christian R. Holmes Professor and Dean of the College of Medicine and UC vice president for health affairs.

Kissela received his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis and later earned a master’s degree in environmental health epidemiology from UC. He joined the neurology department as an assistant professor in 2000 following a residency at the University of Michigan and a one-year fellowship at UC in cerebrovascular disease. He has served as co-director of the Stroke Recovery Center at UC Health’s Daniel Drake Center for Post-Acute Care since 2008. 

Kissela serves as co-principal investigator of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Stroke Study, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The study, begun in 1993, identifies all hospitalized and autopsied cases of stroke and transient ischemic attack in a five-county region surrounding Cincinnati.

He was lead author of a 2012 study on stroke in younger populations that received international attention. He is finishing his term as the chair of the American Stroke Association/American Heart Association (ASA/AHA) Stroke Statistics Committee and has co-chaired the Epidemiology section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Stroke Progress Review Group report.

Kissela is involved with multiple other NIH-funded studies, including UC’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Training award, serving as a member of the Executive Committee and the co-director of the Community Engagement Core. He is a member of the Neurological, Aging and Musculoskeletal Epidemiology NIH Study Section. He won the American Academy of Neurology’s (AAN) Michael S. Pessin Stroke Leadership Prize in 2005.

Kissela was the neurology department’s residency program director for nine years, and has served as chair of the AAN’s Consortium of Neurology Program Directors. He currently is finishing his term on the Residency Review Committee for Neurology, and was invited to participate in the NIH Clinical Center Grand Rounds "Great Teachers Series” in 2008.

Broderick has led the neurology department since 2000. He was one of the founding members of the UC Stroke Team, the first regional stroke team in the United States, and was a member of the team of UC researchers who played a leading role in developing and testing intravenous tPA as a treatment for acute ischemic stroke. 

"Thanks to Dr. Broderick’s leadership and his research and clinical expertise, the College of Medicine and UC Health—through the neurology department and the UC Neuroscience Institute—have attained international prominence in the diagnosis and treatment of conditions involving the brain, spinal cord, nerves and muscles,” Boat said. 

Broderick has served as principal investigator on many federally funded clinical investigations related to stroke, including most recently, the Interventional Management of Stroke III Trial, the largest international randomized interventional trial of acute stroke to date and the Familial Intracranial Aneurysm Study, a collaborative research effort of investigators throughout the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand funded by NINDS.

A 1982 graduate of the UC College of Medicine, Broderick has received numerous awards, including the Daniel Drake Medal (2010), the College of Medicine’s highest award; the William Howard Taft Medal for Notable Achievement (2013), the UC Alumni Association’s highest alumni honor; and the AHA/ASA’s Clinical Research Prize (2011), making him the first stroke investigator to receive that award.