Yasmine S. Ali, MD, MSCI
The Positive Cardiologist | Physician-Author-Scholar
Yasmine S. Ali, MD, is a quadruple board-certified preventive cardiologist and clinical lipidologist, bestselling author, award-winning speaker, award-winning essayist and poet, audiobook narrator, and founder and CEO of LastSky Writing, LLC.
Known as The Positive Cardiologist™, Dr. Ali’s work draws on cardiovascular medicine, the science of well-being and healthy longevity, history, the medical humanities, creativity, and storytelling to help people live more positive lives: not only longer, but healthier, deeper, fuller, more meaningful lives. Lives that are rich in purpose, connection, creativity, and likelier to realize full potential.
Her career has moved across disciplines that are often treated as separate: medicine and literature, science and history, scholarship and creativity, health and meaning. For Dr. Ali, however, they have always belonged to the same story: how to live well, in every sense.
Medicine, History, and the Making of a Physician-Scholar
Dr. Ali came to Vanderbilt University as a recipient of the full-tuition Harold Stirling Vanderbilt Honor Scholarship and a member of the College Scholars program. Her interests, even then, crossed the traditional boundary between the sciences and the humanities, and she double-majored in history and molecular biology, with a minor in chemistry.
She graduated summa cum laude, with Honors in the College of Arts and Science, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
She remained at Vanderbilt for medical school, having been one of a select few gaining early acceptance while still a sophomore in college. Her interests in medicine were broad from the beginning. At Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, she served as president of the Vanderbilt History of Medicine Society and chaired World Health Week, while also becoming deeply involved in organized medicine and public health. She graduated from medical school with highest honors and election to Alpha Omega Alpha.
As a senior medical student, she interned with Dr. Rose Marie Robertson, the first woman to serve as president of the American Heart Association. The experience confirmed an interest that would shape the rest of her medical career: preventing cardiovascular disease and helping people preserve health, rather than focusing only on treating illness after it develops.
Dr. Ali completed her cardiovascular medicine fellowship training at Vanderbilt while earning a Master of Science in Clinical Investigation.
She became Vanderbilt Cardiovascular Medicine’s first Advanced Cardiac Imaging Fellow, designing an individualized fellowship in which she achieved Level III (most advanced) training in preventive cardiology, echocardiography, and nuclear cardiology, along with Level II training in cardiac CT and cardiac MRI.
While still a cardiovascular medicine fellow, she became one of the earliest—and youngest—diplomates of the American Board of Clinical Lipidology.
A Career in Preventive Cardiology
Dr. Ali went on to build a medical career centered on prevention, cardiovascular risk reduction, and the promotion of long-term health. She became quadruple board-certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disase, clinical lipidology, and nuclear cardiology, and was designated a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP).
Following her Vanderbilt training, she served as Director of Echocardiography and Director of Preventive Cardiology at Nashville General Hospital at Meharry before establishing Nashville Preventive Cardiology, PLLC, where she spent nearly a decade providing highly personalized preventive-cardiology care.
For a decade, Dr. Ali also volunteered as a cardiologist at Siloam Family Health Center in Nashville, a nonprofit clinic serving patients from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. She began as the clinic’s only cardiologist and went on to teach and supervise multiple Vanderbilt cardiovascular medicine fellows there, introducing them to a uniquely service-oriented, mission-driven model of care rooted in a global perspective.
Her work in medicine extended well beyond clinical practice. Over the course of her career, Dr. Ali has worked as a physician, researcher, educator, medical writer and editor, clinical guideline developer, and consultant, bringing a preventive and evidence-based perspective to each of those roles.
Dr. Ali has authored hundreds of medical articles, in print and online, and has spent decades translating complex medical evidence for physicians, other healthcare professionals, patients, and the public.
She serves as a chief editor of multiple cardiology sections for Medscape Drugs & Diseases from WebMD, and she created the original obesity site for what is now Verywell Health. Her work for MCG Health included developing independent medical-necessity and clinical-care guidelines used by healthcare systems across the United States and internationally.
She has also advised healthcare organizations and global companies on five continents, bringing expertise in cardiovascular medicine, clinical research, medical affairs, evidence evaluation, and health communication to projects spanning a wide range of settings.
Throughout these different roles, prevention remained the constant. Dr. Ali was always less interested in waiting for disease to declare itself than in understanding how health could be preserved, chronic illness prevented, and quality of life protected over the long term.
That perspective reflected her larger view of health itself: not simply the absence or treatment of disease, but the well-being of the whole person.
“Some may see my career trajectory as a pivot away from the practice of medicine, but actually I see it as the opposite. Everything I’ve loved about, and learned from, medicine has brought me to this point, and I believe the physician’s highest calling is to attend to the well-being of the whole person—and that includes mental, emotional, and spiritual as well as physical well-being, if we are truly to achieve whole-person health.
“I’ve always been more interested in health promotion as a long-term strategy, as opposed to the damage control of simply treating disease, which is a necessary reaction, but still a reaction. We can do more, and we can do much better, to preserve health and prevent chronic illness, and thereby vastly improve quality of life. And it starts with recognizing human beings as whole persons, not as a collection of body-organ-systems.”
—Yasmine S. Ali, MD
Writer, Historian, and Storyteller
Dr. Ali has been a writer of stories since she learned how to write, and writing has never been separate from Dr. Ali’s life in medicine. For decades, she has written across forms and disciplines—medical and scientific writing, journalism, essays, poetry, history, creative nonfiction, and fiction.
She is an award-winning essayist and poet, and her writing has appeared in national publications. Her essay work received national recognition when she was named a winner of Real Simple magazine’s “Life Lessons” essay contest.
Across genres, her creative writing reflects many of the same questions that have shaped her work in medicine: how people show resilience, adapt, find hope and meaning, connect with one another, decide what is worth protecting, learn from history, and make sense of the lives they are given.
History Made Personal
Dr. Ali’s background in history found an especially personal expression in Walk through Fire: The Train Disaster that Changed America, her bestselling narrative history of the catastrophic 1978 train disaster in her hometown of Waverly, Tennessee.
Her parents were the physicians on call when the disaster occurred and saved many lives. Decades later, Dr. Yasmine Ali became the disaster’s historian, reconstructing the events through painstaking, extensive research that included the firsthand accounts and experiences of survivors, first responders, medical personnel, and community members. Her seminal history of the disaster also traces the changes in emergency management (including the establishment of FEMA), railroad safety, and hazardous-materials handling that followed.
Walk through Fire was selected for the Network of the National Library of Medicine Reading Club, named one of MDLinx’s “5 Great Books to Read,” chosen as an AEMO Library Book of the Month, and featured on a C-SPAN Book TV Panel at the Southern Festival of Books.
From History to Fiction
Dr. Ali next released her debut novel, The View from the Cliffs, an internationally acclaimed work of literary medical fiction that combines medicine, history, politics, place, hope, and human connection.
Published through LastSky Books, the fiction imprint of LastSky Writing, the novel has reached readers on three continents and is now in its second printing. Dr. Ali also designed both its cover and interior, extending her creative role beyond authorship into the visual and publishing aspects of the book.
From Page to Performance
Dr. Ali is also an audiobook narrator, performing and recording her own works in audio.
She narrated the audiobook edition of Walk through Fire, earning warm praise from listeners for the authenticity of her portrayal of the rural American South.
For the audiobook edition of The View from the Cliffs, Dr. Ali is undertaking an even more ambitious performance, narrating the novel in three different accents and incorporating four languages.
Ongoing Projects
Dr. Ali continues to write in both nonfiction and fiction. Her current projects include Courage to Pivot: 5 Steps to Successful Career Change (anticipated 2027 release), as well as a planned series of historical thriller novels. Together, these forthcoming works extend a body of writing that explores health and positive living, history and reinvention, human connection, community, and the ways people create meaning in their lives.
“Ali’s creative words embody hope.”
—Justice Edwin Cameron, South Africa
The Positive Cardiologist
Dr. Ali’s work today represents an expansion of the questions that first drew her to preventive cardiology.
She developed the concept of Positive Cardiology as a way to combine the principles of cardiovascular prevention with the science of well-being and healthy longevity. Its fundamental premise is simple but far-reaching: health is one’s true wealth, and health is not limited to physical measures alone, but rather depends greatly upon one’s attitude toward life and toward one’s future. Living a healthy, positive life rooted in optimism actually expands the possibilities of what life can be: full of purpose, creativity, self-realization, connection, meaning, and contribution.
Positive Cardiology thus reflects Dr. Ali’s broader view that living well is not simply about adding years to life; it is about what she calls healthy longevity: making those years healthier, deeper, fuller, more meaningful, and more positive.
Because happier hearts are healthier hearts, and vice versa.™
The ORCHID Model for Positive Living™
At the heart of Dr. Ali’s work is the ORCHID Model for Positive Living™, which represents six pillars that have emerged repeatedly across her decades of work, study, and experience:
Together, these principles reflect a view of health—and of life—that reaches far beyond conventional risk factors and biomarkers to include how individuals approach their lives, connect with others and with the world around them, create, find purpose, respond to adversity, care for themselves and others, and imagine their own futures. They are also, not coincidentally, the very values that have guided Dr. Ali’s own life and career paths.
Speaking, Writing, and Conversation
Through her speaking and seminars, Dr. Ali draws on medicine, science, history, and storytelling to explore the relationships among optimism, purpose, creativity, connection, community, meaning, health, and longevity.
She is also host of the podcast Positive Vibes: On the Sunny Side with Yasmine S. Ali, MD, where she shares ideas and conversations about health, optimism, creativity, history, culture, resilience, and the people working to make the world a more positive place.
Dr. Ali is also the author and publisher of the monthly Positive Vibes e-magazine, which highlights uplifting stories, evidence-based health insights, books and culture, history, practical inspiration, and the science of optimism.
Across these different forms, the subject matter may vary, but the larger purpose always remains the same: to help people live healthier, longer, more positive lives.
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