Payal Kohli, MD, FACC

Payal Kohli, MD, FACC, is an associate adjunct professor in the Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, at Duke University and Johns Hopkins University. She is also founder and medical director of Cherry Creek Heart.

Dr Kohli earned her undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a perfect grade point average, and she earned her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, where she graduated magna cum laude. She is quintuple boarded in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, echocardiography, nuclear cardiology, and vascular interpretation. Dr Kohli is residency trained in internal medicine and has completed fellowships in cardiovascular disease, clinical research in cardiovascular medicine, advanced echocardiography, and preventive cardiology. She completed her internal medicine training at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and she completed her cardiovascular disease fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr Kohli obtained her clinical research fellowship from the prestigious Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction Study Group in the Cardiovascular Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she authored and pioneered dozens of original publications.

She is an internationally recognized cardiovascular disease expert who delivers invited lectures all over the world, including at almost every major cardiology scientific meeting. Dr Kohli routinely represents the American College of Cardiology (ACC) in a number of projects. She has published in leading journals, including The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, Circulation, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), with dozens of original publications. She has received multiple honors and young investigator awards, including from the ACC, the American Heart Association (AHA), and the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. She was also the recipient of the 5280 Top Doctor Award, the ACC 2022 Cardiologist of the Year Award, and, recently, the ACC 2024 Gifted Educator Award.

Dr Kohli is a television medical correspondent working for Tegna Broadcasting, a company that owns more than 60 local news outlets. She has an incredible talent for simplifying complex medical concepts into easy-to-understand language for the lay population, and she has had more than 1500 national television appearances all over the country in her role as a medical correspondent.

In addition to her television, research, and clinical work, Dr Kohli is adept at providing expert second opinions through her contributions to multiple second opinion services. Moreover, she has held multiple peer review and editorial positions in which she has been responsible for providing feedback on research and clinical submissions by her peers. For example, she was the assistant editor of JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging, was the inaugural media editor for JACC, and is the immediate past section editor of Women and Ischemic Heart Disease for Current Atherosclerosis Reports. She is also currently on the editorial board for the Prevention Council of ACC.org and is the Medscape cardiology consult chief editor.

Dr Kohli is also a prolific writer and enjoys writing about the practice of medicine and the challenges faced by physicians. She has published several dozens of columns and opinion pieces. She also contributes continuing medical education content for her peers.