Alan S. Go, MD
Photo: Alan S. Go

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Elected 2008

Dr. Go is Regional Medical Director of the Clinical Trials Program, Associate Director of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Conditions Research, and Director of the Solutions Through Technology and Advanced Analytics Research (STAR) Group at the regional Division of Research in The Permanente Medical Group within Kaiser Permanente Northern California. He is also Professor of Health Systems Science at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine; Professor of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco; and Consulting Professor in the Department of Medicine (Nephrology) at Stanford University.

He is an internationally-recognized cardiovascular and renal epidemiologist, health services and outcomes researcher, and clinical trialist. Dr. Go has made seminal scientific and methodological contributions in cardiovascular and cardio-renal epidemiology as well as evaluation of the translation of randomized trials into clinical practice. He has achieved this through a coordinated research program ranging from analyzing large electronic health records databases to prospective cohorts to initiating development of a regional clinical trial consortium and a national cardiovascular research network. For example, among 1.1 million adults, he provided compelling evidence that even mild chronic kidney disease—affecting many individuals with serum creatinine concentrations previously considered to be “normal”—significantly increases the risks for cardiovascular disease, hospitalization, and death. Through the NIH-sponsored prospective Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort (CRIC) Study, Dr. Go has provided key insights into alternative approaches to estimating kidney function that do not involve using serum creatinine or race/ethnicity data in an effort to promote greater equity and quality in health care. He also delineated the population prevalence of atrial fibrillation, a potent stroke risk factor, and provided the first large-scale evidence that oral vitamin K antagonists prevent ischemic stroke in persons with atrial fibrillation in the general population nearly as effectively as seen in randomized trials of highly selected samples. Dr. Go is spearheading efforts on designing and implementing randomized controlled trials of interventions (biologics, devices, nutrition, lifestyle and system-level interventions) within different health care delivery systems to accelerate evaluation of therapies while expanding the representativeness of participants across multiple therapeutic areas. He is also leading work to evaluate the utility of machine learning/AI-based vs. traditional statistical methods for personalized risk prediction for disease and response to therapies. 

Overall, the theme of Dr. Go’s work is to improve cardiovascular and kidney disease risk prediction, prevention and optimal treatment, and he has taken a multi-faceted approach through clinical investigations at the levels of genetics, circulating biomarkers, clinical characteristics, evaluating practice patterns and testing novel interventions for atherosclerotic vascular disease, heart failure, kidney disease, atrial fibrillation and stroke.