Each year, leading advocates, policymakers, and champions in the aging community gather in Washington, DC, to celebrate our collective efforts to enhance healthy aging. As we approach our annual Heroes in Health Celebration on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, we’re highlighting the remarkable work of our award honorees in this blog series.

Our 2025 Silver Innovator, Dr. Foluso Fakorede, is a trailblazing interventional cardiologist dedicated to reducing health disparities in underserved communities. Specializing in preventive cardiovascular care, women’s heart health, and catheter-based treatments for Coronary and Peripheral Artery Disease (CAD and PAD), Dr. Fakorede has centered his work on expanding access to quality care, beginning in the Mississippi Delta. He has also partnered with Congress to establish the first bipartisan PAD Caucus, advancing legislation to prevent avoidable amputations and improve PAD research, education, and treatment nationwide. 

We caught up with Dr. Fakorede this summer to chat about his work:

How have your lived experiences shaped and inspired your work as a cardiologist?

 My work as a cardiovascular specialist, dedicated to saving lives and preserving limbs, is inseparable from my lived experiences. I am the son of Nigerian immigrants whose sacrifices taught me grit, resilience, and the unshakable belief that hard work can change the course of a life. In 2000, just weeks before my medical school entrance exam, I lost my brother unexpectedly. That loss became my compass. It reshaped me—not just as a person, but as a physician, an advocate, and a relentless dealer of hope. His absence fuels my urgency, my compassion, and my refusal to accept preventable suffering as “just the way things are.” Furthermore, training in places as starkly different as Camden–New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the Upper East Side of New York City exposed me to the profound contrasts in health, access, and dignity—teaching me that geography, income, race, and systemic inequities shape outcomes long before a patient ever meets a doctor.

In the Mississippi Delta—a land of rich history and culture, yet scarred by some of the worst health disparities in America including the highest amputation rates by congressional district—I’ve seen how a ZIP code can be as deadly as a diagnosis. I’ve witnessed patients lose limbs not because the science failed them, but because the system did: no access to timely vascular care, no awareness that their pain or wound was a warning sign, no one fighting for their right to a second chance.

These moments remind me that medicine is more than procedures and prescriptions. It’s about dismantling the barriers—social, economic, and systemic—that keep people sick. It’s about using both technical skill and human connection to restore not just circulation, but dignity. Every patient I treat is a reminder of my mission: to give every person—regardless of race, income, or geography—the access, awareness, and hope they deserve before it’s too late.

What challenges have you faced in educating communities about the importance of cardiovascular health?

One of the greatest challenges is dismantling the fatalism that takes root in communities where preventable disease has become a way of life. In places burdened by generational poverty, deep distrust of the medical system, and limited access to care, heart attacks, strokes, and amputations are often seen as inevitable—just part of the story. Changing that mindset requires more than pamphlets or clinic visits; it demands a sustained, culturally attuned presence in the heart of the community.

That means meeting people where they are—whether in churches, civic halls, music festivals, schools, community centers, or through partnerships with Departments of Health. It means speaking their language, honoring their history, and showing up again and again so they know you’re not just passing through, but committed for the long haul.

For me, this has meant investing my own time—often after clinic hours, on evenings and weekends—and personal resources to rally my team around a shared mission. Together, we’ve built a coalition grounded in PURPOSE! The best approach transforms education from a lecture into a partnership—shifting people from passive acceptance of disease to active pursuit of health.

 As a nationally recognized leader in raising awareness about Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), what is the most important thing you want people to know about PAD?

Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) is one of the most common, costly, debilitating, deadly—yet most preventable—cardiovascular epidemics in America. It affects nearly 1 in 5 adults over the age of 65, but remains underdiagnosed and undertreated. PAD can present in many ways—from classic leg pain when walking, to rest pain, non-healing ulcers, gangrene, or even no symptoms at all.

Black Americans have the highest prevalence of PAD and neglected risk factors, yet the lowest awareness of the disease. And the problem isn’t limited to one group—overall awareness is low among patients, providers, and communities nationwide. This means people most at risk are often never told they have PAD until it’s too late.

PAD is more than a limb issue—it is a powerful marker of systemic disease that signals elevated risk for heart attacks, strokes, and death. Early detection of PAD is a gateway to upstream management of multiple chronic conditions, reducing not only limb loss but also the cardiovascular events that claim far more lives. Detecting and treating PAD early could also save billions of dollars in healthcare costs currently spent on managing the devastating consequences of this preventable epidemic.

The stakes are high: in the U.S., more than 160,000 amputations occur each year, many of them entirely preventable if PAD is detected and treated early. PAD–CLTI has worse three-year mortality than breast, prostate, or colon cancer, and approaches that of lung cancer—yet unlike cancer, there is no systematic screening and no mandate for pre-amputation vascular evaluation. In hospitals without limb salvage protocols, patients—disproportionately older, Black, Hispanic, or Native American—are often sent straight to amputation without any attempt at revascularization.

This is not a technology problem—it is a detection and coordination problem, and it is solvable. Thousands of lives and limbs could be saved each year if we closed this gap. Amputation should never be the first option without a complete vascular workup. Outdated screening guidelines, insurance barriers, fragmented care, and implicit bias stand in the way—but a simple, inexpensive test like the ankle-brachial index (ABI) can change the trajectory. Awareness saves lives, but access ensures that awareness becomes action. 

Why is advancing research that addresses the conditions of older adults so important?

The recent GAO study on limb loss makes the urgency undeniable: among traditional Medicare beneficiaries with limb loss in 2016, 61% died within four years—compared to just 20% of all beneficiaries. Older adults carry the greatest burden of PAD and other cardiovascular diseases, yet crucial factors like frailty and mobility impairment are too often overlooked as risk amplifiers.

Even more troubling, the very population most affected is frequently excluded from clinical trials. That is systemic ageism—and it leaves us with misinformed diagnoses, incomplete data, and treatments that fail to meet the realities of those who need them most.

Advancing research for older adults is not optional—it is imperative. It means designing studies that include them, tailoring therapies to their needs, and addressing the complex interplay of chronic conditions, multiple medications, access to limb-preserving procedures, access to prosthetic devices, and functional limitations. This is how we shift from a healthcare system that simply measures survival to one that safeguards dignity, independence, and quality of life.

Because in the end, it’s not just about adding years to life—it’s about adding quality life to years.

I have always felt that the vision of life is that – We should all try to live as long as we can, as well as we can and have a short but glorious ending. Our society should be designed to support this perspective such that aging is not the period of life where we wind down physically and mentally, but one where we and society gets the most benefit of our lifetime of experiences and where we can make some of our most impactful contributions. 

How can our readers get involved in the fight against health disparities in marginalized communities?

Health disparities are not just a medical problem — they are a moral crisis. The ProPublica investigation into the Black American amputation epidemic revealed how thousands lose limbs each year due to systemic neglect, limited access, and unequal standards of care — even though most cases are preventable.

Action begins with policy. Urge your representatives to support the Amputation Reduction and Compassion (ARC) Act, which would:

• Require Medicare and Medicaid to cover simple, noninvasive PAD screenings for at-risk individuals.

• Expand community-based education and access to limb-preserving care.

• Direct HHS to launch national PAD and amputation awareness campaigns.

• Establish a national strategy to reduce amputation disparities through earlier screening and trusted community partnerships.

We must also humanize the data. Support groundbreaking awareness projects like award nominated Bloodlines, Mississippi — a Nobel Prize Foundation documentary exposing the stark disparities in amputation rates and amplifying the voices of those most affected. Inspired by Nobel Laureates Frederick G. Banting and John Macleod (1923), whose discovery of insulin transformed diabetes care, and Werner Forssmann (1956), whose work in heart catheterization paved the way for modern angiography, the film confronts a painful truth: today, many with diabetes and PAD — disproportionately from minority communities — are denied these very interventions before facing amputation. 

You can also act locally: at your medical visits, take off your socks and have your foot pulses checked; collaborate with health departments; integrate PAD education into allied health programs; encourage patients to seek a second opinion before any amputation; volunteer in underserved areas; and partner with organizations already leading this work.

As Congressman John Lewis urged, “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Ending preventable amputations and closing racial gaps in vascular care is exactly that kind of trouble — the kind that saves lives and limbs.

Join us on Tuesday, September 30, 2025 at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, DC as we celebrate “Trust, Empowerment, and Healthy Aging,” at our annual Heroes in Health Celebration. Registration is now open to purchase tickets. To learn more about awards dinner, visit our event page.