April 22, 2018

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It is a great privilege and honor to continue to serve as HFSA President and update you on our society’s many exciting activities. It has been a very busy and productive spring so far. We held our annual face-to-face Board meeting in Baltimore on March 20, and heard updates on current initiatives, committee reports and other HFSA activities.

The HFSA research program is well underway. More than 600 members participated in the HFSA/ACC/AHA survey of heart failure care providers who have an interest in research. The results will be shared at the Annual Scientific Meeting in September. Next steps include adding clinical trial listings to the HFSA website that are searchable and user friendly for patients. A site-based research training session will be held Tuesday afternoon following the Annual Scientific Meeting, and registration will soon be open.

Developing a Certification Exam, including eligibility criteria, scope and content, continues under the leadership of Mandeep Mehra and his Task Force. Biykem Bozkurt is working on a multi-society Heart Failure Awareness PR Program focusing on understanding heart failure, prevention and best practices. In addition, based on a proposal by Randy Starling, the Board formalized the commitment to international relationships through the formation of an International Committee. We are excited to hear more about these activities in the coming months.

The journal is doing well with a high volume of submissions and unprecedented short turnaround time for decisions! Congratulations to Paul Hauptman for his continued success. There is a lot of exciting work being done by our hard-working committees and volunteers, and as a testament to our enthusiastic society membership we have a record number of applicants for committee positions this year. It is exciting to see the society grow and drive our mission forward.

Plans are coming together for the Annual Scientific Meeting. Named lectures include the Tom Force Keynote Lecture and the Mihai Gheorghiade Lectureship. We also have exciting plans for the opening plenary session.

Finally, I want to remind you of these important upcoming events and opportunities.

• The advanced registration is open for the 21stAnnual Scientific Meeting, September 15-18, 2018, in Nashville hfsa.org.
• The registration site for the 2018 Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Board Review course August 17-19, 2018 in Chicago, is also open hfsa.org/boardreview2018.
• Travel and research grant opportunities are available for Nurses and Pharmacists hfsa.org/grants. The deadline for applications is May 31, 2018

Thank you for your commitment to HFSA and to our mission to reduce the burden of heart failure.

Sincerely,

Christopher O'Connor, MD, FHSA
President HFSA
@coconnormd