Yuji Wakimoto

As a specialist in women’s health, Dr. Melani Harker focuses on obstetrics and gynecology, providing care for women during pregnancy. She is passionate about continuous learning and collaborates with her patients to make informed health decisions. She values women's health at every stage of life. Dr. Harker’s areas of interest include women's health, obstetrics, gynecology, colposcopy, contraception and family planning, gynecologic laparoscopy, hysteroscopy, LGBTQ+ care, menopause, general OB/GYN, and perimenopause. She is currently accepting new patients. To schedule with Dr. Harker or for more information, please call the women’s health center at 801-213-2995. Before joining the University of Utah Health, Dr. Harker practiced privately in Idaho and Hawaii. Dr. Harker completed obstetrics and gynecology and internal medicine residencies at Oregon Health Sciences University. She earned her medical degree from the University of Utah and holds a minor in Spanish from the same institution. She enjoys outdoor activities and spending time with family and friends in her spare time.

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. Morrell bridges the gap between technical research on new methods of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and real world patient care in the clinical practice of radiology. He completed a PhD degree at Stanford University in Electrical Engineering, where his research focused on new methods of MRI. He also completed medical school at Stanford and radiology residency and fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Diagnostic Radiology, and is a practicing board certified radiologist. For the past six years, Dr. Morrell has worked as a faculty member in the Radiology Department at University of Utah Health Care where he splits his time between the clinical practice of radiology and cutting edge laboratory research into new methods of MRI. His clinical specialties include CT, ultrasound, and MRI of the abdomen and pelvis and MRI of the breast. He is a Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator and a member of the Experimental Therapeutics program. Current research interests include development of new MRI technologies applied to improved MRI of the breast for detection of breast cancer.