A new viewpoint article published Feb. 16 in JACC: Case Reports reviews major cardiovascular society presidents in the U.S. over the past century to understand whether representation in leadership positions has evolved over time.

Janet K. Han, MD, FACC, et al., identified and examined cardiovascular societies representing general cardiology, electrophysiology, cardiovascular imaging, heart failure, interventional cardiology, and preventive cardiology. Presidents were identified by sex, race, terminal degree, and number of years in office. The term “gender-president years” was defined as the number of years a man or woman was in office.

According to their findings, the number of national cardiology societies increased between 1915 and 2021, with a total of 12 societies by 2005 and a total of 460 society presidents with 524.5 president-years by 2021. Presidents were predominantly male, with 88.7% male presidents and 89.8% male-president years vs. 11.3% female presidents and 10.2% female-president years. Additionally, presidents were 92.2% White, 2.2% South Asian, 1.7% Black, 1.5% Asian, 1.3% Middle Eastern, 1.1% Hispanic or Latino, and 0% Indigenous.

These findings show a paucity of diversity until the past 10 years, with increasing diversity most notable in the past five years. They also corroborate previous studies showing underrepresentation of women and persons of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds in medical and health care leadership.

“Organizations that have diverse and inclusive leadership teams have been shown to outperform those that are less diverse,” Han writes. “Diverse leaders bring perspectives that spark ‘outside of the box’ ideas from the teams they lead, thus spurring further creative thinking, innovation, and improved problem solving.”

The authors add that diverse society presidents encourage and inspire diversity in current and future generations of cardiologists, leading to better engagement, retention, and deepening of the cardiology pipeline. Currently, women comprise one-half of U.S. medical school graduates, but attracting women trainees to cardiology remains a challenge. Similarly, racial and ethnic diversity continues to increase at an unacceptably slow pace for all of medicine, including cardiology. As such, more diverse society presidents would help transform the cardiology community to better reflect the diverse patient populations and encourage culturally responsive cardiovascular care.

They conclude: “Although the change is small, it is reassuring to see improved diversity in cardiovascular society leadership in the last decade and even more so in the past several years. National cardiology societies must continue these concerted, conscious, and intentional efforts and must remain committed and accountable to increasing the diversity of fellows-in-training, of the membership at large, and at the highest levels of leadership in cardiology.”

Clinical Topics: Arrhythmias and Clinical EP, Cardiovascular Care Team, Heart Failure and Cardiomyopathies, Implantable Devices, SCD/Ventricular Arrhythmias, Atrial Fibrillation/Supraventricular Arrhythmias, Acute Heart Failure

Keywords: Delivery of Health Care, Heart Failure, Problem Solving, Electrophysiology, Social Responsibility, Schools, Medical, Leadership

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