In Memoriam: Ralph L. Sacco, MD, MS, FAHA, FAAN

Ralph L. Sacco, MD, MS, FAHA, FAAN, who served as the 35^th president of the AAN from 2017 to 2019, passed away on January 17, 2023, due to a brain tumor. Sacco was the chairman of neurology; Olemberg Family Chair in Neurological Disorders; Miller Professor of Neurology Public Health Sciences, Human Genetics, and Neurosurgery; executive director of the Evelyn McKnight Brain Institute; Senior Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Science, University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine; and chief of the neurology service at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Read Dr. Sacco’s obituary.

During his tenure as AAN president, Sacco led an initiative to ensure that academic neurology, from department chairs to professors to students, knew about the abundance of Academy resources available to them. He hosted summits with neurology chairs and their business managers to better understand the specific challenges and needs they faced and how the AAN could assist them. He was a strong proponent of enlarging the neurology workforce through the academic pipeline and promoted the concept of the ‘newrologist’ to get people excited in careers in neurology, moving beyond just diagnosis and treatments to include interventions, preventative care, and the future of regenerative care. Sacco also championed the AAN’s Axon Registry^® and closer relationships with the international neurology community.

A graduate of Cornell University and a cum laude graduate of Boston University School of Medicine, Sacco received a master's in epidemiology from Columbia University, School of Public Health. He completed his neurology residency training and postdoctoral training in stroke and epidemiology at Columbia Presbyterian in New York. He was previously professor of neurology, chief of Stroke and Critical Care Division, and associate chairman at Columbia University before taking most recent position in 2007.

Sacco was an international expert in stroke epidemiology and health disparities. He was the founding principal investigator of the Northern Manhattan Study, the Florida Puerto Rico Collaboration to Reduce Stroke Disparities, and the Miami Clinical Translational Science Institute, as well as co-investigator of multiple other NIH grants. Sacco published extensively with over 1,000 peer-reviewed articles (h-index 109) in the areas of stroke prevention, treatment, epidemiology, risk factors, vascular cognitive impairment, human genetics, and outcomes and has been listed as a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher since 2017.

He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the AAN Wartenberg Lecture, AHA Feinberg Award of Excellence in Clinical Stroke, the WSO Global Stroke Leadership Award, AHA Gold Heart Award, the NINDS Javits Award in neuroscience, and numerous named lectures.

Sacco was a fellow of both the Stroke and Epidemiology Councils of the American Heart Association, a fellow of the ANA, and an elected member of the Association of American Physicians and National Academy of Medicine. He was the first neurologist to serve as the president of the American Heart Association from 2010 to 2011.