Heart disease and stroke, the nation’s No. 1 and No. 3 killers, have a new public enemy.

Ralph Sacco, the Olemberg Family Chair in Neurological Disorders and Miller Professor of Neurology, Epidemiology and Human Genetics, chair of neurology at the Miller School of Medicine, and neurologist-in-chief at Jackson Memorial Hospital, has been elected president of the American Heart Association.

He is the first neurologist ever named to the post.

“Stroke is expected to have a growing impact on America’s health,” explains Nancy Brown, the American Heart Association’s chief executive officer. “Dr. Sacco’s breadth of expertise in this area and in overall cardiovascular disease prevention is vitally important to our mission.”

An international authority on the prevention and treatment of stroke, Sacco served as lead author of AHA’s national stroke prevention guidelines and oversaw community-based programs to combat stroke. In 1990 he established the pioneering Northern Manhattan Stroke Study at Columbia University, a National Institutes of Health-funded community study that found Hispanics have a greater incidence of certain types of stroke, and that exercise and moderate alcohol consumption offer some protection against stroke risk.

“I am delighted to serve and help broaden the mission of the American Heart Association, which has always included the American Stroke Association,” says Sacco, who joined the Miller School in 2007. “I am excited about pushing the prevention mission further than we have gone in the past.” Beginning this July, he will serve as president-elect for a year before assuming the presidency in 2010.