Philip B. Gorelick, MD MPH is Professor of Neurology at the Davee Department of Neurology and the Simpson Querrey Neurovascular Research Laboratory, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Prior to joining Northwestern, he was the John S. Garvin Professor and Head of Neurology and Rehabilitation at University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago where he also directed the Center for Stroke Research, the Jannotta Presidential Professor in Neurology at RUSH Medical Center in Chicago where he directed the Stroke and Neurocritical Care program, and Executive Medical Director of Hauenstein Neurosciences in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as part of the Trinity Health System. Dr. Gorelick’s early NIH funding focused on stroke prevention and cognitive studies in the African-American community to better understand why persons with stroke did or did not develop cognitive impairment. His research team was one of the early groups to recognize the role of vascular risks not only for vascular cognitive impairment but also in Alzheimer’s disease. This led to his interests in brain health and its maintenance, whereby Dr. Gorelick led a writing group that authored an American Heart Association (AHA) scientific statement on vascular contributions to cognitive impairment, and later he first-authored an AHA publication on the definition of brain health in adults, emphasizing the importance of vascular risks (e.g., AHA’s Life’s Simple 7 and Essential 8). He is the immediate past chair of the AHA Brain Health Subcommittee and more recently has been the co-chair of AHA scientific statements on brain health and marijuana use and cardiac contributions to brain health (in press).

Dr. Gorelick has published over 400 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has edited a number of books and book chapters on stroke and the prevention of stroke. He is currently the lead investigator and is funded by the Northwestern University Havey Institute for Global Health to study stroke care in Kano, Nigeria and receives NIH funding to direct the Northwestern University site for a training grant in Ibadan, Nigeria, to help train the next generation of Nigerian clinical scientists in HIV with a focus on stroke and psychiatric research to unravel mechanisms leading to new treatments and preventatives. In addition, Dr. Gorelick works with colleagues in the Radiology Department at Northwestern on NIH-funded studies of the role of vascular pulsatility and perfusion of cortical and subcortical cerebral small vessels on brain health.