Cardiology at the Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center

A history of events relative to the development of the medical sub-specialty of cardiology at the Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center, told from the personal perspective of a member of the Keck USC School of Medicine in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, who arrived there as an Internal Medicine resident in 1956 and has practiced academic medicine at the medical center continuously since that time.

A history of events relative to the development of the medical sub-specialty of cardiology at the Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center, told from the personal perspective of a member of the Keck USC School of Medicine in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, who arrived there as an Internal Medicine resident in 1956 and has practiced academic medicine at the medical center continuously since that time.

L. Julian Haywood, MD, is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at the University of Southern California and Honored Clinical Professor of Medicine at Loma Linda University. He has authored or co-authored over 600 scientific publications, with a focus on hypertension, cardiac arryhthmias, sickle cell disease, and computer applications in cardiology. Notably, he led a team that developed the first computerized system for real-time heart arrhythmia detection in 1969. Raised in Warrenton, North Carolina, where his father was the first and, for many years, only African American physician, he attended John R. Hawkins High School before entering the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program at Howard University (1944-45). World War II concluded, he transferred to Hampton Institute (now University) where he earned a B.S. degree with high honors in Biological Sciences in 1948. He then returned to Howard where he received his M.D. degree with honors in 1952. After interning at St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, New York, Dr. Haywood trained as a resident in psychiatry at the University of Virginia before leaving in protest of its segregated student housing policy. He then began an internal medicine residency at Howard University's Freedmen's Hospital before being called to service as a Lieutenant in the US Navy Medical Corps at Bayonne, New Jersey. He arrived at Los Angeles County General Hospital in 1956 as a second-year internal medicine resident. After a two-year year fellowship in cardiology at White Memorial Hospital, in Los Angeles, he returned to the County Hospital as a member of the Loma Linda University faculty. In 1963, he was a traveling fellow at Oxford University, under Regius Professor Sir George Pickering. Dr. Haywood has received multiple honors during his long career, including membership in Alpha Omega Alpha, Distinguished Alumnus of Hampton University and Howard University, career achievement and service awards from the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, and American College of Physicians, and honors from the Myasnekov Institute of Russia. He helped establish and led the Sickle Cell Disease Research Foundation and was a founding member of the Association of Black Cardiologists. The Coronary Care Unit at the Los Angeles County Hospital-USC Medical Center, which he established in 1966, was renamed "The L. Julian Haywood Coronary Care Unit" in 2016.