Dr. Irfan M. Asif is the associate dean for primary care and rural health and professor and chair of the Department of Family and Community at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He is certified in family medicine and sports medicine. Dr. Asif hopes to bring infectious enthusiasm for everything family medicine and sports medicine, including the ability to provide excellence in patient care, to be outstanding educators, to always strive for quality improvement, and to provide service in a number of venues. The Department of Family Medicine is a recognized leader in primary care and Dr. Asif envisions that the department will be a home for faculty, learners, and staff across the United States who have the ambition, ability, and motivation to collaborate with their colleagues at UAB to make it the most exciting academic medical center in the country. In his role as associate dean for primary care and rural health, Dr. Asif is working with UAB Heersink School of Medicine leadership, UAB regional campuses and other key partners in Alabama and beyond to improve the primary care pipeline and address disparities in health outcomes, including in rural communities and in urban underserved areas.
Dr. Asif currently serves on the Board of Directors for the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) and is an Associate Editor for both the British Journal of Sports Medicine and Sports Health: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach. He has served as a team physician for all levels of athletics, including high school, collegiate, and professional sports programs. He currently serves as a team physician for UAB Athletics.
His research explores several domains within sports cardiology with an emphasis on combating physical inactivity for the prevention of cardiometabolic disease. He has been invited to participate and speak at a number of national and international venues, such as the American College of Cardiology Sports and Exercise Cardiology Think Tank, the International Olympic Committee Conference on the Prevention of Injury and Illness in Sport, and the Spanish Olympic Committee Medical Commission of Spain XIV Conference of Medicine and High-Level Sport. For this work, he has earned a number of honors including the AMSSM Best Overall Research Award, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Best Overall Research Paper, and the David T. Sisk Award for Best Review Paper in the journal Sports Health.
Dr. Asif is also an avid educator. He has extensive experience as a sports medicine fellowship director and currently serves as the Chair for the AMSSM Fellowship Committee. His recent work includes developing standards of excellence for sports medicine fellowship training programs across the United States and he is also a current member of the writing group that is composing the International Syllabus in Sports and Exercise Medicine Education. His contributions have earned several awards including the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Resident Teaching Award, the University of Tennessee Faculty Teaching Award, and the Mayo Clinic School of Continuous Professional Development Course of the Year Award.
Finally, Dr. Asif has provided service in a number of capacities within the community and at the national level. In sports medicine, he has served on the AMSSM Research, Fellowship, Public Relations, Collaborative Research Network, and Annual Meeting Program Planning (Program Chair 2014-2015) Committees. He has also served as the chair of the AMSSM Sports Medicine In-Service Training Exam (ITE) subcommittee, which writes the ITE yearly to prepare sports medicine physicians to pass the Sports Medicine certification exam.
Dr. Asif is a former elite level soccer player and is married with two children
