Biographical Narrative 

Dr. Capers is an interventional cardiologist, professor of medicine, and transformational leader in academic medicine. His clinical expertise includes trans-radial cardiac interventions and acute coronary syndromes. He has been widely decorated as an educator, clinician, and champion of diversity enhancement in medicine. His patient satisfaction scores have ranked in the 90th percentile nationally six times and physician peers have named him one of America’s “Best Doctors” annually from 2009-2020. He is the recipient of the American Heart Association’s Laennec Clinician-Educator Award, the “Exemplary Leadership Award” of the AAMC Group on Diversity and Inclusion, the American College of Cardiology’s Distinguished Leadership Award in Diversity and Inclusion, and was elected to membership in the exclusive Association of University Cardiologists, an honor society of academic cardiologists. The award of which he is most proud is the “Professor of the Year” Award bestowed by the Ohio State University College of Medicine graduating class of 2019. 

As the dean for admissions at Ohio State from 2009-2019 he led the school to have one of the most diverse classes in the nation while keeping the average MCAT score above the 90th percentile. In 2012 Capers had all admissions committee members take the Implicit Association Test to uncover unconscious biases related to race, sexual orientation, and gender. This led to the first study to document the presence and extent of unconscious racial bias in medical school admissions.  

A passionate protagonist for enhancing diversity in medicine as one strategy to eliminate healthcare disparities, Capers has written several articles discussing strategies to diversify cardiology programs and is considered a national authority on the topic. He is currently the chair of the American College of Cardiology’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee and is an inaugural member of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force of the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions.  

Capers speaks widely in the US and internationally on diversity, racism, and bias in medicine. He has been an invited Grand Rounds lecturer at more than 40 major academic medical centers, a keynote plenary speaker at more than 15 national conferences and has led implicit bias mitigation training for the boards of trustees of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, American College of Cardiology, and the American Pediatric Surgical Association. To date he has moderated over 300 implicit bias mitigation workshops, training over 2,000 physicians in strategies to reduce implicit bias in patient care and in the selection of medical students, residents, and fellows.   

Capers is a graduate of Howard University and The Ohio State University College of Medicine and completed his internal medicine residency and fellowships in cardiovascular diseases and interventional cardiology at Emory University in Atlanta. In 2020, he joined the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center as the Rody P. Cox Professor of Medicine, the associate dean of faculty diversity, and the inaugural vice chair of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the dept of internal medicine.