This post was authored by Daniel E. Forman, MD, chair of the ACC’s Geriatric Cardiology Section Leadership Council and Member Section.

The ACC’s Geriatric Cardiology Section (GCS) was recently awarded with two prestigious grants to help support some very exciting education initiatives.

Most recently, the GCS Leadership Council was awarded a U13 Grant by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), one of the 27 Institutes and Centers of the National Institute of Health. The Leadership Council sought the grant in collaboration with the American Geriatrics Society to fund a series of three scientific conferences. The conferences are intended to identify knowledge gaps and to formulate a research agenda in three pivotal areas at the intersection of geriatrics and cardiovascular disease.

The first conference, to be held at ACC's Heart House in Washington, DC in late 2014 or early 2015, will focus on multimorbidity in older adults with cardiovascular disease. Subsequent conferences will address polypharmacy and diagnostic testing. All conferences will convene key leaders in the geriatrics and cardiology communities, along with representatives from NIA, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and public policy organizations.

An additional objective of the conferences is to provide a forum for junior investigators and Fellows in Training (FIT) to interact with senior leaders and foster interest and career development in cardiovascular aging research.

A second grant, awarded as a result of an effort by the Section’s Research Work Group, will provide $25,000 from the Association of Subspecialty Professors (ASP) – the organization of internal medicine subspecialty division chiefs at medical schools and community teaching hospitals.

This grant will be used to implement a web tool for comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA), known as CLIN-CARE (Clinical Comprehensive Assessment and Referral Evaluation). CLIN-CARE will be implemented using ACC’s patient education website, CardioSmart.org, enabling patients to complete the assessment online and learn about the principles of geriatric assessment.

In implementing the tool, the Research Work Group hopes foster an appreciation among FITs and the broader cardiovascular community for the value of CGA and lead to the formation of a comprehensive dataset from which FITs will be able to study the relationship between specific geriatric domains and the burden of cardiovascular disease.

In preparation for launching the CLIN-CARE assessment tool, the Geriatric Cardiology Section has selected five FITs to receive $500 travel stipends for to attend ACC.14 and act as champions for the program at their institution. Congratulations to the following FIT Champions:

• Deena Goldwater, MD, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
• Lisa LeMond, MD, Oregon Health & Science University
• Subroto Acharjee, MD, Albert Einstein Medical Center
• Tracy Hagerty, MD, Washington University School of Medicine
• Maninder Singh, MD, Guthrie

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