Emily Lau Selected for 2026 Wenger Research Goes Red Award

Emily S. Lau, M.D., M.P.H., a cardiologist and investigator at Mass General Brigham in Boston, has been selected to receive the American Heart Association’s 2026 Dr. Nanette K. Wenger Research Goes Red® Award for Best Scientific Article on Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke in Women. The selection recognizes her manuscript, “Contemporary Burden of Cardiovascular Disease in Pregnancy: Insights from a Real-World Pregnancy Electronic Health Record Cohort,” published online in the Association’s journal Circulation on October 6, 2025. The award is scheduled to be presented on November 7, 2026, during Scientific Sessions 2026, which are scheduled for November 6-9 in Chicago.

Lau also co-directs the Mass General Brigham Women’s Heart Health Program and is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The study used electronic health records to examine cardiovascular health and pregnancy-related cardiovascular complications over nearly two decades. It included 56,833 pregnancies among 38,996 individuals treated at multiple institutions between 2001 and 2019.

Maternal cardiovascular disease was present in 4% of pregnancies overall, or 8% after adjustment for age. The age-adjusted prevalence increased from 1% in 2001 to 7% in 2019. Pregnancy-related cardiovascular complications occurred in 15% of pregnancies overall, or 17% after adjustment for age, and also increased during the study period.

The analysis found complications within one year after pregnancy were more common among people who entered pregnancy with cardiovascular conditions or risk factors, including high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes or obesity. Lau and her colleagues also found that pregnancy-related cardiovascular complications were disproportionately higher among non-Hispanic Black women. The results covered maternal death, major adverse cardiovascular events and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, as well as cardiovascular complications during the first year after pregnancy.

The findings identify the period before, during and after pregnancy as an important opportunity to recognize cardiovascular risk earlier and connect patients with preventive care. Because the study was an observational analysis of electronic health records, its results document patterns and associations in the available records rather than demonstrating that a particular condition or risk factor caused the observed increases. “Dr. Lau’s research demonstrates the urgent need to make cardiovascular health a routine part of care before, during and after pregnancy,” said Jennifer Hall, Ph.D., FAHA, chief of data science and analytics at the American Heart Association.

“By documenting how cardiovascular disease and pregnancy-related complications have increased over time, this study identifies an important opportunity to recognize risk earlier, address disparities and help more women protect their heart health throughout their lives.” Lau said the findings show that more individuals were entering pregnancy with cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disease, while pregnancy-related cardiovascular complications were increasing in parallel. “It is a tremendous honor to receive an award bearing Dr. Wenger’s name and to share this recognition with my co-authors,” Lau said. “Our findings show that more individuals are entering pregnancy with cardiovascular risk factors and cardiovascular disease, and pregnancy-related cardiovascular complications are also increasing in parallel.

The Dr. Nanette K. Wenger Research Goes Red® Award for Best Scientific Article on Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke in Women is presented annually for the best research article or articles focused on cardiovascular disease and stroke in women that were published during the preceding year in one of the American Heart Association’s peer-reviewed scientific journals. The award is named for Nanette K. Wenger, M.D., FAHA, an emeritus professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at Emory University School of Medicine. Wenger is a consultant to the Emory Heart and Vascular Center, founding consultant to the Emory Women’s Heart Center and director of the Cardiac Clinics and Ambulatory Electrocardiographic Laboratory at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

The American Heart Association’s Research Goes Red® initiative aims to empower women to contribute to health research. Submissions for the 2026 award were evaluated by 32 expert peer reviewers for scientific impact, innovation, methodology and the quality of data and evidence supporting the manuscripts’ hypotheses and conclusions. Lau’s manuscript was selected from 130 submissions from 18 countries published in the American Heart Association’s peer-reviewed scientific journals between June 1, 2025, and May 29, 2026.

The reviewers evaluated the published research, while the award announcement and planned November presentation provide the context for the selection. The Scientific Sessions meeting is described by the Association as a global exchange of scientific advances, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science. Lau is a women’s cardiovascular health specialist and clinical-translational investigator whose work examines how biological sex differences and female-specific risk factors contribute to cardiovascular disease.

Her research combines multidimensional molecular profiling, imaging, exercise physiology and data science with large-scale cohorts, electronic health record data and patient-oriented studies. The areas addressed in this body of work include cardiovascular health across women’s lives, including pregnancy, infertility, menopause and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. At Mass General Brigham, she is co-director of the Women’s Heart Health Program, director of the Cardiometabolic Health and Hormones Clinic and program director of the Women’s Heart Health Fellowship.

She also serves on the American Heart Association’s Women in Cardiology Committee. Lau’s research is supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the American Heart Association, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center and the Tianqiao & Chrissy Chen Institute. Her honors include the 2024 American College of Cardiology Douglas P. Zipes Distinguished Young Scientist Award, the 2025 American Society for Clinical Investigation Young Physician-Scientist Award, the Claflin Distinguished Scholar Award, the Roman W. DeSanctis Clinical Scholar Award and the Sheila Balson Endowed Cardiac Scholar.

She is a member of The Menopause Society’s board of trustees and scientific program committee. Lau earned her undergraduate and medical degrees from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and her master of public health degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. She completed her residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she also served as chief medical resident, followed by fellowships in cardiovascular disease and advanced echocardiography at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The award presentation is scheduled for the Dr. Nanette K. Wenger Research Goes Red® Award for Best Scientific Article on Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke in Women session on Saturday, November 7, during the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2026.

Subject of Research: An observational study of cardiovascular disease and pregnancy-related complications in a multi-institutional electronic health record cohort.

Article Title: Mass General Brigham women’s heart health leader to receive the 2026 Dr. Nanette K. Wenger Research Goes Red® Award

Article References: Mass General Brigham women’s heart health leader to receive the 2026 Dr. Nanette K. Wenger Research Goes Red® Award. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

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Keywords: Emily Lau, cardiovascular disease, pregnancy, electronic health records, maternal health, hypertensive disorders, health disparities, American Heart Association, Wenger Award, Mass General Brigham, Mass, General