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Ali Ahmed, MD, MPH

Professor
Washington DC Veterans Medical Center
VA Medical Center, District of Columbia, United States

Ali Ahmed, MD, MPH, is Associate Chief of Staff for Health and Aging of the Washington DC VA Medical Center, and Professor of Medicine of George Washington University and Georgetown University, Washington, DC. Dr. Ahmed is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on chronic heart failure in older adults. His work is funded by NIH and VA, and he has presented and published extensively.

Dr. Ahmed’s research has focused on improving the care and outcomes of older adults, a group frequently excluded from randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which are considered the gold standard for evidence-based practice. The inherent methodological challenges of observational studies limit their reliability as sources of evidence. However, outcome-blinded, propensity score-matched studies have emerged as valuable tools for generating high-quality evidence when RCTs are impractical, unethical, or lack sponsorship. Unlike other propensity score methods, such as inverse probability of treatment weighting often used in “target” trial emulation—which generates synthetic patient populations that may be less acceptable to clinicians—propensity score-matched studies rely on real-world patient data, producing insights that are more practical and clinically relevant.

A specific area of Dr. Ahmed’s research has been the care of older adults with heart failure (HF) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), a high-risk group that is less likely to receive evidence-based therapy with renin-angiotensin system inhibitors (RASI). Over the past two decades, Dr. Ahmed has investigated the impact of RASIs in these patients, demonstrating their benefits despite lingering concerns about adverse effects on the kidneys. His recently completed VA-funded study provides answers to these concerns, with data on octogenarian patients with HF and CKD to be presented at the 2024 GSA Joseph T. Freeman Award lectureship in geriatrics. The emerging role of artificial intelligence in personalizing care for the increasingly heterogeneous and diverse older population will also be discussed.

Disclosure information not submitted.

Presentation(s):

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