Chief, Professor

Dr. Kim Allan Williams, Sr., is the Endowed Professor of Health Equity and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University of Louisville (UofL). He originates from the South Side of Chicago and transitioned from the inner-city Chicago Public Schools to the College of the University of Chicago (UC), where he majored in biology (AB’75). He earned four Maroon varsity tennis letters, playing number one singles for his last three years, and subsequently taught and played tennis professionally. He trained at UC’s Pritzker School of Medicine (MD’79), internal medicine at Emory University (1979-82), and back to UC for Cardiology (1982-85), Clinical Pharmacology (1984-85), and Nuclear Medicine (1984-86). He is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Nuclear Medicine, Nuclear Cardiology, and Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.

Dr. Williams began his academic leadership as UC faculty (1986) and was promoted to Professor of Medicine and Radiology in 2003. He became the Dorothy Susan Timmis Professor and Chief, of the Division of Cardiology at Wayne State University in 2010, and was the James B. Herrick Professor and Chief of Cardiology at Rush University (2013-22). He also served as Rush’s Associate Dean for Faculty Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (2020 -22) until he was appointed Chairman of Medicine at UofL in 2022. He has served as President of the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC) and as Chairman of the Board of the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC). His career has focused on advocacy for national nutrition education, eradication of national and international healthcare disparities, improved healthcare access, overall health system reform, sustainable healthcare financing, and increased access to advanced cardiac imaging. Dr. Williams has been a delegate for cardiology to the AMA for over 20 years and has served as a consultant for the FDA and CMS. He is active on the Task Force advising the 2022 White House Conference on Nutrition, Health, and Hunger.

He was the founder of the Urban Cardiology Initiative in Detroit, Michigan, aiming to reduce ethnic heart care disparities, and continued these community-based efforts in Chicago at Rush, including the H.E.A.R.T. program (Helping Everyone Assess Risk Today), screening for heart disease, intervening with education, nutrition and lifestyle changes. At the University of Louisville, he transitioned the H.E.A.R.T. program to include diagnostic testing for risk assessment (Helping Everyone Address Risk Today).

He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention (https://ijdrp.org/index.php/ijdrp). He is an internationally recognized author and speaker with over 1300 original research manuscripts, book chapters, editorial and guideline publications, online resources, movies, and lectures, most recently on the topics of cardio nutrition and health equity.

He has been perennially named in America’s Top Doctors and has received multiple national and international awards including lifetime achievement recognition from ABC (Daniel D. Savage Award), ASNC (Mario Verani Lecturer), National Lipid Association (Lifetime Membership Award), the German Cardiac Society (Gold Key Recipient and Keynote Lecturer) and the Australia New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine for over 20 consecutive years of Keynote Lectures (2002 to 2022).