Before retiring as a professor emeritus in July 2022, Dr. Kern was the Gordon A. Ewy, MD Distinguished Endowed Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center, chair of the Sarver Heart Center Resuscitation Research Group and professor of medicine at the UArizona College of Medicine - Tucson. Dr. Kern graduated magna cum laude from Brigham Young University. Following his graduation, he attended Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, where he graduated Alpha Omega Alpha. His postgraduate education and cardiac fellowship training were at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Kern is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a fellow of both the Council of Clinical Cardiology and the Cardiopulmonary, Critical Care, Peri-operative, and Resuscitaiton Council of the American Heart Association, a fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians, a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and a fellow of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions.
Dr. Kern's research interests are in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and coronary blood flow. He is the coordinator of the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Research Group. He was inducted as an honorary member of the European Resuscitation Council in 2014 and named a CPR Giant by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation in 2015. He has been awarded numerous American Heart Association grants, an AHA-Flinn Young Investigator award, and two three-year awards from the Arizona Disease Control Research Commission grant in the area of basic CPR research, and one three year award to perform an investigator-initiated pilot RCT of early cath versus no early cath for those post cardiac arrest without ST elevation. He has published over 250 scholarly reports, including 180 peer-reviewed original scientific articles.
He has received numerous honors for excellence in teaching. He was voted House Officer Educator of the Year and is on the Dean's List for Excellence in Teaching. In 1995-96, he was a Dean’s Teaching Scholar at The University of Arizona College of Medicine. He received the Cardiology Fellowship Teaching or Mentoring Awards in 1996, 1999, 2001, 2008, 2009 and the Cardiology Interventional Lifetime EducationalExcellence award in 2015. Dr. Kern has been a Visiting Professor at the Sao Paulo School of Medicine, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and at The Leopold-Franzeus University of Innsbruck in Innsbruck, Austria.
Dr. Kern is active in the American Heart Association, serving as president of the Old Pueblo Division, Arizona Affiliate in 1992, and president of the AHA - Arizona Affiliate in 1993. He was chairman of the American Heart Association National Subcommittee for Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) from 1997-2000. He was Chairman of the of the American Heart Association's Cardiopulmonary, Critical Care, Peri-opertive and Resuscitaiton Council during 2001-2013. He is currently the Chairman of the American Heart Association's Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee. He is a past chairman of the Emergency Cardiac Care Committee of the American College of Cardiology and a past governor of Arizona for the American College of Cardiology.
Dr. Kern is past chief of staff for Banner- University Medical Center, and the is the immediate past director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories. He is an active cardiac interventionalist.
Dr. Kern has been named as one of the “Best Doctors in America” each year since 1996.
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Major projects within CPR include: No ventilation basic life support CPR Myocardial blood flow during CPR in an animal model with coronary artery lesions Post-resuscitation LV dysfunction