Steven Jacoby, MD became interested in treating heart disease after seeing how coronary heart disease, cholesterol disorders, and diabetes affected his family members. As a general cardiologist, Dr. Jacoby is often one of the first doctors a patient with a heart condition encounters at Yale Medicine. He likes to use models of hearts and diagrams of the cardiovascular system to explain what’s happening to patients and help put them at ease. “Every patient is different,” he says. “We talk about the long-term consequences of each treatment and what each patient’s fears are.”