Biography - Oyere K. Onuma, MD

Oyere Onuma, MD, MSc, is a nationally recognized authority on cardiovascular disease prevention. She is a general cardiologist who takes a proactive approach to helping patients who have multiple risk factors avoid developing serious heart disease. “I think of health not just as the absence of disease,” Dr. Onuma says, “but as a state in which patients are thriving, where they are able to do all the things they want to do for themselves—and with their families.”

Before she decided to pursue cardiology, Dr. Onuma studied biomedical engineering in college. “For me, cardiology started with a real love for the physiology and the mechanisms behind the heart, which is very much a machine,” she says. “So, it works in a way that I can understand.” She also was impressed by the many tools for helping patients, including advanced techniques such as imaging, blood testing, and genetic testing that can help with understanding a patient’s risk and the ability to treat them appropriately.

Dr. Onuma recommends talking to a cardiologist about prevention to anyone who has multiple risk factors, such as a strong family history, high blood pressure or cholesterol, and lifestyle factors like poor nutrition or physical activity. “We can often target an intervention to reduce the risk,” she says. “We want to get in before the point where they develop significant heart disease.”

In addition to caring for patients, Dr. Onuma is associate director of the Yale Preventive Cardiovascular Health Program. She has research interests in determining the best way to implement novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools in real-world settings, and to address health disparities on local, national, and global levels. 

She is affiliated with the Yale Institute for Global Health and served as a medical officer with the World Health Organization, where she helped launch the Global Hearts Initiative to support governments in strengthening cardiovascular disease prevention and control. She is the author of multiple publications in Stroke, Lancet, Circulation, and The New England Journal of Medicine, among others.

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