Heart & Vascular collaborative to set direction
For more than 50 years, UTHealth Houston has played a vital role in cardiac care, research and education. Building upon these strengths, President Giuseppe N. Colasurdo and Dean John Hancock recently announced the formation of UTHealth Houston Heart & Vascular—a collaborative of departments, divisions, and programs working together to set the direction for academic and clinical services.
“We have recently experienced exponential growth in the breadth, scope, and quality of our services—and we believe that we are just getting started,” Colasurdo said. “Working with university leadership, we have come together to create a new mission for our collective teams: to be a world-class heart and vascular center providing the very best in personalized, high-quality care through innovation, exceptional patient experience, and medical education.”
UTHealth Houston Heart & Vascular will be overseen by an Executive Directors Council composed of leaders from Advanced Cardiopulmonary Therapies and Transplantation, Cardiology, Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery, Electrophysiology and the university’s Chief Academic Officer—and supported by teams of faculty and staff members focused on specific specialties and subspecialties. To ensure strategic and operational alignment, the Executive Directors Council will be responsible for the organization, financial planning, clinical coordination, quality efforts, hospital affiliations, educational programs, and research priorities for each of these specialties.
Over the next five years, we will focus on the following initiatives:
- Redesigning our clinical enterprise and services to improve cardiac care delivery for this community and beyond;
- Growing and innovating our research programs;
- Enhancing the educational experience for our trainees; and
- Developing our workforce by recruiting, retaining, and investing in our faculty and staff.
“We look forward to working with all of you—within our departments, divisions, the school, across the university, and in partnership with our affiliated hospitals—to create a unified, comprehensive, multi-disciplinary, and world-class program that offers the highest quality clinical services, fosters groundbreaking discoveries, and trains future physicians and scientists in the continual journey to advance heart and vascular care,” Colasurdo said.
Members of the UTHealth Houston Heart & Vascular Executive Directors Council include Dr. Anthony Estrera, professor and chair, Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery; Dr. Igor Gregoric, chief and program director, Center for Advanced Heart Failure; Dr. Ramesh Hariharan, chief, Cardiac Electrophysiology; Dr. Biswajit Kar, chief, Center for Advanced Heart Failure; Dr. David McPherson, chair, Internal Medicine; Dr. Jagat Narula, executive vice president and chief academic officer; and Dr. Gustavo Oderich, chief, Vascular and Endovascular Surgery.