Widely respected throughout the national and international cardiovascular community, Dr. Malissa Wood has been selected to serve as Lee Health’s new vice president and chief physician executive of the Lee Health Heart Institute.

Dr. Wood comes to Lee Health from Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was a staff physician in the Cardiac Ultrasound Laboratory as well as the co-director of the Corrigan Women’s Heart Health Program and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. She was the principal investigator of the Happy Heart Trial, a primary prevention study designed to improve the cardiovascular health of high-risk, low-income women. Dr. Wood has also conducted clinical research for the U.S. Olympic Committee, Harvard University athletes, marathon runners and rowers and has published extensively on cardiac adaptations to exercise.

She received her Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Missouri Kansas City, and she completed both her Internal Medicine and Cardiology training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, where she served as chief medical resident.