fbpx
USA

Dr. Garima Sharma is a national leader in Women’s Health and Preventive Cardiology. She is the Director of Cardio-Obstetrics at Johns Hopkins and an Associate Vice Chair for Women’s Careers in Academic Medicine. She is also the Chair of the Task Force on Women’s Academic Careers in the Department of Medicine. Her interest in diversity, health equity, and gender are the result of her experiences as a first-generation immigrant to the US and a woman navigating a career in Cardiology, a subspecialty where women are under-represented.
In 2021, Dr. Sharma became the Governor of the Maryland Chapter of the ACC. She was Vice-Chair of an AHA Policy Statement “Call to Actions: Maternal Health and Saving Mothers.” In this document, Dr. Sharma and her co-authors provided comprehensive recommendations to improve maternal health. The authors advocated for policies to remove barriers to health care access and quality, systematically address social and structural determinants of health, incentivize care coordination among providers across the maternal care continuum, and cultivate and expand partnerships that empower community members to promote cardiovascular health in their communities. She is co-author on the American Heart Association Scientific Statement on Cardiovascular Consideration in Caring for Pregnant Patients released in 2020. Dr Sharma was also the co-author on the recent 2021 ACC/AHA/SCAI Coronary Artery Disease Revascularization where she wrote the sections on secondary prevention and SCAD. She is the recipient of AHA Health and Social Needs Grant to understand the social determinants of risk of hypertension in reproductive age women in Baltimore. Her research has been awarded funding from NIH and American Heart Association and she has published extensively in Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation, Journal of American Medical Association on disparities in Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes.
Her clinical and research interests are in cardiovascular disease in women especially pregnancy, preeclampsia, maternal obesity, health disparities, post-partum prevention of complications from hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.
She is also a leading expert in diversity and gender equity issues in medicine. She is on the ACC DEI Council speaker’s bureau and is the PI of the largest gender equity study in Cardiology. She has written several articles on cardiovascular disease in pregnancy, gender equity in cardiology, mentoring and career development for FITs and ECs. She Dr. Sharma has led several national initiatives for professional development of fellows in training and is the President for the Maryland Chapter of the American College of Cardiology (ACC). She is also the Section Editor for JACC Advances for Women’s Health and Cardio-Obstetrics.
With her unique combination of clinical training, passion and expertise in research, and her commitment to a culture of inclusivity, Dr. Garima Sharma serves as a bridge between the different arms of the academic mission, all in service of enhancing the quality of care and prevention for all patients, and especially women.