Dr. Karol Watson, professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has received the 2023 Bernadine Healy Leadership in Women’s CV Disease Award from the American College of Cardiology.

When she began her career, Watson was interested in how to prevent, diagnose and treat heart disease in women, but the research had been conducted in men. Over the course of two decades, she has focused her research and clinical work on how heart disease presents differently in women and how to improve treatment in women.

Watson, an attending cardiologist, is director of the UCLA Women’s Cardiovascular Health Center and the UCLA-Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Health Program, a center dedicated to educating women with or at risk for heart disease and conducting research to improve heart health. She is also co-director of the UCLA Program in Preventive Cardiology and director of the UCLA Fellowship Program in cardiovascular diseases.