Medical science has helped add decades to the lives of many children born with congenital heart disease (CHD). The next challenge for health care providers is finding ways to optimize care for every child and deliver modern care around the world to areas where less than 10% of children with CHD are receiving it.

"My medical career began just at the end of when we had developed reasonable strategies to care for people with CHD," says Kathy J. Jenkins, MD, MPH, FACC. "Optimizing that care delivery is an issue of our time. I am very passionate about how to disseminate optimized care to every person in the world who has CHD."

Jenkins, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, examines the challenges to improving care delivery to CHD patients during the Dan G. McNamara Keynote. She also is the chair of the Steering Committee for ACC's Adult Congenital and Pediatric Cardiology Quality Network and leads the global International Quality Improvement Collaborative for Congenital Heart Disease.

"My goal is to inspire the next generation of passionate, caring physicians to take it to the next level. I want to make a few points about what that will take and what barriers are preventing my group of peers from getting as far one could have imagined," she says. The essential elements of caring for children and adults with CHD have been established in the West, and in particular in the U.S. The challenge is to take the lessons learned in establishing that care and work out how to broadly implement it to every child in the U.S. and around the world. A key point that stakeholders agree on is that the U.S. health care delivery system will not work in underdeveloped nations, Jenkins says.

"CHD care needs to be streamlined to get the most care delivered with the lowest possible resources. There is not enough money, people and time to get everyone the care they need," she says. "There is too much inefficiency in our system to even think about replicating it."

Stakeholders must work together to develop a collective vision of the delivery of care and the professional homes of health care providers, such as the ACC, must provide the vehicle for implementing that vision, Jenkins says.

"The more we have societies and organizations aligned around that mission and passion and the more we have leaders to step up and do hard work underneath, the more we will make progress," she says. "I want people to have a clear eye on where we are now, what the opportunities are and what the barriers are. I want people to find part of the story that fits them, to play an important role and to collaborate with others so that in 10 years or 20 years the world of CHD looks better in the U.S. and is better globally."

Watch the 2020 Dan G. McNamara Keynote at Virtual.ACC.org.

Clinical Topics: Cardiovascular Care Team, Congenital Heart Disease and Pediatric Cardiology, Congenital Heart Disease, CHD and Pediatrics and Quality Improvement

Keywords: ACC Publications, ACC Scientific Session Newspaper, ACC Scientific Session Newspaper 2020, ACC Annual Scientific Session, acc20, ACC International, Child, Delivery of Health Care, Developing Countries, Health Personnel, Health Resources, Heart Defects, Congenital, Naphazoline, Parturition, Quality Improvement

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