Naveed Sattar was not always sure that he wanted to go into medicine—he just knew he did not want to be a grocer. “My father owned a grocery store in Blantyre, a village outside Glasgow. My siblings and I, we all worked there, and I found it boring,” he says. “My parents were wonderful. Hard workers, fantastic role models—but while I liked the people, I did not enjoy the routine.”
Sattar had good grades, so he enrolled in medical school simply because that was what one did with good grades. He attended the University of Glasgow but had another identity crisis during his first clinical job after graduation.
“It was working nonstop, long shifts, just drawing blood and clocking patients. I became depressed and lost my confidence,” he says. Sattar abandoned medicine for 6 months to become an accountant. “After one day of auditing I thought, ‘Bloody hell, this is way worse than anything medical.’”
It was not until he landed a job in metabolic medicine as the senior house officer at Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow that Sattar really discovered his passion.
“One of my consultants brought me a book of locally collected data on fish oil results in pregnancy and asked what I made of it. And that woke something in my brain,” he says. “For the first time, I realized there was a world beyond clinical work—there was research.”
Sattar is now professor of cardiometabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow. He has authored >1,400 research papers, received numerous awards, including the Minkowski Prize (from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) and the Edwin Bierman award (from the American Diabetes Association in 2025), and is a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, and the U.K. Academy of Medical Sciences.
“I have that privilege of being able to connect things across different specialties, whether that’s cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune disease, reproductive medicine, obesity, or diabetes,” he says. “This, and my experience with epidemiology, trials, and guidelines, lets me see the bigger picture.”
Sattar was recently appointed the U.K.’s Obesity Healthcare Goals Program Chair, a reflection of his increasing work in obesity-driven conditions.
“We’ve done a good job of raising awareness around issues like blood pressure, cholesterol, and smoking, but the one risk factor going in the wrong direction, all over the world, is obesity, which impacts so many different diseases,” he says. “As night follows day, type 2 diabetes generally follows weight gain. That’s the key.”
Sattar wants to push boundaries and, in addition to obesity trial work, is currently adapting communication strategies for patients.
“We’re writing a one-page leaflet with realistic goals for dietary change. For example, there’s the standard idea of cutting sugar from tea or coffee, but you have to remind people to give their pallet time to adjust. That they’ll eventually get to a point where they prefer tea without sugar,” he says.
“Then there’s the question of information delivery,” he adds. “People respond to different strategies. Leaflets may work for some, while TikTok videos may work better for others. We have to think outside of the box.”
For all his success, Sattar recognizes that the early stages of his professional journey could have been smoother with a mentor. In his current position as a leader in his field, he makes himself available to the next generation of medical academics.
“I spend a lot of time coaching youngsters, helping them gain confidence, teaching that it’s about small victories, small steps, and daring to fail, often,” he says. “You never know where you can go, but all you can do is take it one step at a time.”
