Jennifer Ho, MD

Dr. Ho is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Harrison Family Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Research, Director of Research in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, faculty member of the advanced heart failure and heart transplantation section at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Associate Member of the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT. She completed her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley, Harvard Medical School, followed by internal medicine residency at BWH, cardiology fellowship at UCSF, and heart failure/transplant fellowship at BWH.

Dr. Ho is an internationally recognized physician-scientist conducting clinical and patient-oriented translational research to understand mechanisms driving obesity-related cardiovascular disease with a focus on heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Her work has advanced current understanding of HFpEF in the following areas: (1) delineating HFpEF risk and scope, including identification of adiposity and cardiometabolic dysfunction as central determinants of HFpEF, and the importance of sex differences in adiposity and female-specific risk enhancers; (2) identifying molecular mechanisms of HFpEF including the importance of systemic inflammation nd adiposity-related pathways; (3) highlighting the importance of inter-organ communication including vascular function as key factors in development of HFpEF. 

Her lab has been continuously NIH funded, and she has published over 175 peer-reviewed original investigations. Dr. Ho directs the Cardiovascular T32 training grant at BIDMC, is the incoming Deputy Editor for Clinical Cardiology at Circulation, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation. She is the recipient of multiple teaching and mentoring awards including the 2023 A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award at Harvard Medical School, and was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation in 2024.