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American College of Cardiology Receives Peripheral Arterial Disease Coalition’s National

Stay in Circulation Community Service Award

The Peripheral Arterial Disease (P.A.D.) Coalition presented its National Stay in Circulation Community Service Award to the American College of Cardiology (the College) at the Coalition’s fifth Annual Meeting.  The Stay in Circulation Community Service Award recognizes a national organization whose activities have focused on increasing awareness about peripheral arterial disease (P.A.D.) to high-risk populations, patients and/or the health care community.  The College received the Stay in Circulation Community Service Award for its extensive efforts to educate health care professionals and to advance the quality of care for people with P.A.D. 

Among its many contributions, the College is spearheading the P.A.D. Guidelines Implementation Task Force that is working to put the ACC/AHA 2005 Guidelines for the Management of Patients With Peripheral Arterial Disease into practice.  The Task Force has developed an array of new P.A.D. clinical practice tools such as slide sets, professional education Web casts, wall chart for medical offices, and patient tools.  Currently, the College is bringing together multidisciplinary stakeholders to develop P.A.D. performance measures and clinical data standards to improve the quality of care. In addition, the College is coordinating the P.A.D. GAP Alliance Demonstration Project, a one-year, 100-site, P.A.D. quality improvement project focused on developing a strong evidence base to demonstrate that P.A.D. Guidelines can be applied successfully in an array of primary care settings.

"On behalf of the P.A.D. Coalition, we are delighted to present the 2008 National Stay in Circulation Community Service Award to the American College of Cardiology," said Alan T. Hirsch, M.D., Chair of the P.A.D. Coalition, Professor of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and Director of the Vascular Medicine Program at the Minneapolis Heart Institute.  “From the outset, the College has been an exemplary member of the P.A.D. Coalition, leading the way in planning, coordinating and implementing professional education activities to improve the quality of care for people affected by peripheral arterial disease.”

The Peripheral Arterial Disease (P.A.D.) Coalition is an alliance of leading health organizations, vascular health professional societies, and government agencies united to raise public and health professional awareness about lower extremity P.A.D.  Established in 2004, the P.A.D. Coalition is coordinated by the Vascular Disease Foundation (www.vdf.org), a national, not-for-profit section 501(c)(3) organization and is supported by the following national sponsors:  the Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership; Cordis Endovascular, a division of Cordis Corporation; Abbott Vascular; AnGes, Inc.; AstraZeneca; Bard Peripheral Vascular; Baxter Healthcare; BioMedix; Cook, Inc; W.L. Gore & Associates; Medtronic; Novo Nordisk; Omron; Summit Doppler; and Vermillion.  

For more information about P.A.D., visit www.P.A.D.coalition.org.

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