Omar Wever-Pinzon

Dr. Thomas Hanff is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Utah and the Salt Lake VA Medical Center. Dr. Hanff graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of California, Los Angeles with a major in Neuroscience and a minor in Public Policy (2008). He received his medical degree and Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine and Public Health (2013). He then trained at the University of Pennsylvania where he completed internship and residency in Internal Medicine (2016) and fellowships in Cardiovascular Disease (2019) and Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology (2021). He also completed a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology while at the University of Pennsylvania (2020). He joined the faculty at the University of Utah, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine in 2021. Dr. Hanff specializes in the care of patients with advanced heart failure of all types, both in the hospital and in the outpatient setting. He has extensive expertise in the management of patients who require advanced heart failure therapies such as left ventricular assist devices, heart transplantation, or inotropic therapy. He also specializes in the care of patients with acute decompensated heart failure or cardiogenic shock and in the use of temporary mechanical circulatory support devices as a bridge to recovery or more definitive therapy. He strives to practice at the forefront of evidence-based medicine, with personalized therapeutic plans for every patient matched to their underlying illness and goals of care. Dr. Hanff’s research is motivated by two simple questions: 1) Which patients would benefit from various advanced heart failure therapies and 2) When is the optimal time to offer each therapy to a patient based on their individual characteristics? To answer these questions, Dr. Hanff has developed a research program that couples traditional outcomes research with personalized “omics” approaches, using advanced statistical modeling techniques, bioinformatics, and machine learning. He collaborates with several highly regarded researchers throughout the world and works closely with numerous landmark national and international cohorts. His work has been published in top medical journals including JAMA Cardiology, Circulation Heart Failure, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, JACC: Basic to Translational Science, Hypertension, and Stroke. Dr. Hanff is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine, and Echocardiography. He is involved with numerous professional societies including the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, the American Heart Association, the Heart Failure Society of America, and the American College of Cardiology, for which he has served on the Clinical Data Standards Task Force.

Dr. Kevin Whitehead is an Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Utah, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatric Cardiology at Primary Children's Medical Center. He also is an Attending Physician at the George E. Wahlen Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He is co-director of the Utah Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program and is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease, Adult Congenital Heart Disease and Comprehensive Echocardiography. He cares for adults with congenital heart disease, heart disease in pregnancy, and other patients with cardiac complications of genetic diseases (such as muscular dystrophies). As an outgrowth of his interests in congenital and genetic cardiovascular diseases, Dr. Whitehead is also the Director of the Utah Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT) Center of Excellence, and in this role provides overall medical management and coordination of care to HHT patients seen at the University. Dr. Whitehead received his M.D. from the University of Alberta, and did an Internal Medicine residency at the University of Western Ontario. He completed Cardiology fellowship and a Cardiovascular Research fellowship at the University of Utah, where he was named a Pfizer Cardiovascular Research Fellow in 2000. He is a fellow of the American Heart Association, and a member of the American Society of Echocardiography and the North American Vascular Biology Organization.