Director, Healthy Heart Program Prevention Clinic

Director, Heart and Stroke Foundation Lipid Research Laboratory

Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism

University of British Columbia

Dr. Gordon Francis is a native of Vancouver and completed his BSc at Simon Fraser University in 1979, his MD at McGill University in 1984, internship and residency in Internal Medicine at UBC in 1988, and Endocrinology and Metabolism Fellowship at the University of Alberta in 1990.  He then completed a 4-year basic research fellowship on high density lipoprotein (HDL) metabolism and clinical training in dyslipidemia management at the University of Washington.  His research interests include the mechanisms of formation of HDL particles, developing novel therapies to increase HDL for the prevention of coronary heart disease and stroke, and clinical studies on reducing atherosclerosis risk. 

After 13 years in the CIHR Group in Molecular and Cell Biology of Lipids and Director of the Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Clinic at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Dr. Francis returned to Vancouver in 2007 to become Director of the Healthy Heart Program Prevention Clinic, previously called the Lipid Clinic, and a principal investigator in the James Hogg iCAPTURE Centre and Providence Heart and Lung Institute at St. Paul’s Hospital.  He holds funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of BC & Yukon as Director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation Lipid Research Laboratory.  His clinical specialty is in complex genetic and secondary dyslipidemias and overall cardiovascular risk management for the prevention of ischemic vascular disease and diabetes.