Ensuring optimal cardiovascular care is central to honoree's calling

Dr. Joshua Beckman suffered from severe asthma from the age of 3. That often meant midnight visits from his doctor to avoid a trip to the emergency room.

"He really made a difference in the way I felt," Beckman said of Dr. Leroy Engel, whose White Plains, New York, pediatric practice became a cornerstone of his childhood. "From age 11, I decided I wanted to help people, like he did."

Beckman's compassionate approach to patient care was shaped in large part by that experience, as well as by his mentors, Drs. Mike Weisfeldt and Mark Creager. He works hard to communicate in ways patients understand, with a focus on building mutual trust. This core value extends to his work in clinical practice guidelines development. Under his leadership, significant improvements were made in the efficiency of the process to get new science-backed treatment recommendations to health care professionals, increasing access to the information they need to provide high quality, trustworthy care.

Beckman is chief of vascular medicine and a professor in the department of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He also serves as an associate editor of Circulation, the leading scientific journal for cardiovascular medicine, and has been a dedicated American Heart Association volunteer since 2004.

For his transformative impact on the guidelines development process in support of longer, healthier lives, Beckman will receive an American Heart Association 2025 Award of Meritorious Achievement on June 17 during the association's National Volunteer Awards ceremony in Plano, Texas.

"Josh has a talent for bringing complex topics down to a human level, allowing him to build consensus in even the most nuanced discussions," said Mariell Jessup, the association's chief science and medical officer. "His vision and leadership have significantly advanced our ability to deliver clinical practice guidelines that are trusted, timely and accessible."

Beginning in 2022, Beckman served a three-year term as chair of the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Joint Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines, the group tasked with ensuring the most current science on cardiovascular disease is incorporated into clinical guidelines. These guidelines then inform the diagnosis, treatment and care of patients, playing an important role in improving health outcomes.

Beckman was eager to get involved. "There really isn't a lot of work that one can do to improve the health care of thousands or millions of people. Guidelines provide that opportunity," he said.

Historically, each of the guidelines was published individually, with large areas of overlap across the subject matter. This forced clinicians to thumb through hundreds of pages of information across multiple guidelines to find the latest clinical recommendations they needed to treat a patient. It also meant that a single change in one document could cascade, making swaths of information in other guidelines obsolete.

Beckman and the committee spearheaded the vision to create a digital platform that made the information searchable and enabled rapid updates, paired with a concise, standardized format to be applied to every guideline.

"We visualized the platform as a giant filing cabinet, where you could remove and replace one file with new information, without disturbing the rest of the system," he said.

The group also worked to ensure that the burden of proof needed to change any guidance was consistent and clear across the board. These changes demystified and streamlined the process, encouraging more experts to participate in guideline writing and review.

Ultimately, the work of the clinical practice guidelines committee helps health care professionals make efficient, evidence-based care decisions, giving them more time to focus on patients' immediate concerns. "It brings the received wisdom of the entire community to bear in a room with a single patient," Beckman said.

Beckman brought the same continuous improvement philosophy to his concurrent position as chair of the association's Vascular Health Advisory Committee from 2021 to 2024. Leaning into the American Heart Association's established role as a convener, he brought 16 health organizations together to form the Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) Collaborative.

PAD — a narrowing of the arteries that carry blood from the heart to elsewhere in the body — is a risk factor for heart attack and stroke. If left untreated, it can lead to gangrene and amputation. Beckman led the collaborative to create a PAD heat map, which displays amputation rates by congressional district and has become a powerful tool for advocates to attract greater resources for PAD research and care.

An avid mentor, Beckman is dedicated to uplifting the next generation of science and medical professionals to make an impact in their own way. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Lauren, and their two children, biking the trails of Dallas and listening to music — he's partial to punk rock.

Beckman said he's "incredibly grateful" to receive the AHA's Award of Meritorious Achievement, but that the real honor is the impact he's been fortunate to make on patients around the world. "Working for the AHA is working for better public health. Every moment is incredibly important, because we only have a certain amount of time in our lives to make a difference."

He shared the story of a 19-year-old college student who had severely elevated blood pressure and an almost entirely blocked aorta.

"We're going to do everything we can to make you feel better," Beckman told the woman. "And I'll know that my job has been successful when you forget to come to one of my appointments."

"That will never happen," the patient assured him. But three years later, it did. Not only has she gone on to live a healthy life, Beckman said, but the experience inspired her to become a lawyer to help other people get the health care they need.