Improving Cardiovascular Care in China

One of our guiding values at the AHA is improving and extending people’s lives, and I’ve had the pleasure recently to be part of global meetings striving to do just that. Earlier this month, our joint AHA and Chinese Society of Cardiology (CSC) Senior Management Group (SMG) had a highly productive series of meetings in Beijing to kickoff our collaboration and development of quality improvement programs for Acute Coronary Syndrome and Atrial Fibrillation in China.

The project will be called Improving Care for Cardiovascular Disease in China (CCC) and builds on the AHA’s 13 years of experience implementing Get with the Guidelines® in the US. The first phase of the project will establish a patient care registry and recruit the first 75 hospitals to participate in the program. Within 2 years it is expected that more than 200 hospitals throughout China will be participating in the program.

I’d especially like to thank Louise Morgan for her outstanding effort preparing and facilitating the meeting with her China counterparts. During our meeting, I also transitioned my role on the SMG to Kathryn Taubert, who I know will do an outstanding job.

Members of the AHA/CSC Senior Management Group include Prof. HUO Yong, Prof. GE Junbo, Dr. Sydney Smith, John Meiners and Kathryn Taubert, Ph.D., as well as project coordinators Louise Morgan, Prof. ZHAO Dong, and Prof. LIU Jing. While we were in Beijing, we also kicked off the 2nd year of our AHA Professional Resource Centers (PRC) with more than 80 key opinion leaders from hospitals throughout China in attendance. Improving the quality of patient care and Get With The Guidelines® and was the key topic of the three-hour education seminar, with AHA volunteers Dr. Gray Ellrodt and Dr. Sid Smith as key presenters. The AHA PRC program is a year-round Professional Education Series that involves 91 Chinese hospitals.