Interventional Cardiologist
Dr. Foluso Fakorede was born and raised in Nigeria and immigrated to America as a young teenager. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and a minor in Economics from Rutgers University. He received his M.D. degree from the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Camden, New Jersey, performed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Hospital, and returned to New Jersey to complete Cardiology fellowship, Interventional Cardiology, and Endovascular intervention at Cooper University Hospital- Camden, New Jersey. During his fellowship, Dr. Fakorede was honored with the distinction of Chief Cardiology Fellow. He specializes in preventative cardiovascular management, women’s heart health, and catheter-based procedural focus in Coronary Atherosclerosis Disease (CAD) and Peripheral Atherosclerosis Disease (PAD).
In 2015, Dr. Fakorede moved to the Mississippi Delta and started Cardiovascular Solutions of Central Mississippi with a mission to educate and provide access to quality health care for all. He has become a national voice in the fight against the impact of health disparity in underserved communities. As the Co-chair of the Association of Black Cardiologists’ and PAD initiative, Dr. Fakorede has been at the helm of working with Congressional lawmakers to establish the first-ever bipartisan PAD caucus whose mission is to support legislative bills to stop the virulent practices of preventable amputations and to educate communities about legislative activities aimed to improve PAD research, education, and treatment.
In 2018, as part of a congressional delegation, Dr. Fakorede testified on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., regarding the epidemic of peripheral arterial disease and spearheading a “sprint to zero amputation campaign” with policy actions proposed to stop unnecessary amputations. Dr. Fakorede traveled to Cuba in October 2018, as part of the Congressional Delegation (CODEL) to discuss the impact of diabetes management on the peripheral arterial disease pandemic. Dr. Fakorede has established partnerships with lawmakers, community, industry, university, and faith-based stakeholders to facilitate cardiovascular education, promote nutrition coaching, highlight social determinants of health, improve access to quality care, and engender trust in underserved communities. These preventative initiatives, aggressive screening adaptations, and quality intervention strategies have led Dr. Fakorede to decrease amputation rates by 88% over a four-and-a-half period in his site of service in the Mississippi Delta. This accomplishment has been highlighted in the ProPublica article, “The Black American Amputation Epidemic”, published on May 19, 2020. This article reached a potential of 150 million people by being included in 636 total airings of “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt”. Additionally, over 13 million people were reached via tweets. This important article addressing unnecessary amputations has been reprinted in Med page Today, AJMC, The Hill, and Fierce Healthcare. Dr. Fakorede’s work for health equality has been highlighted by Business Insider, Australia, Men’s Health Magazine published August 2020, and Reader’s Digest published October 2020. He was recently honored by The ROOT 100 most influential African Americans in 2020. Dr. Fakorede has become the PAD advocate with a purpose that is impacting the lives of the forgotten and voiceless and ultimately eliminating health care disparities.
“Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.