2023 Family Heart Foundation Education Highlights

The Family Heart Foundation is committed to educating every stakeholder about the importance of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), elevated lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a), and early cardiovascular disease.
This includes individuals living with the disorders, health care professionals, payers, and key policymakers. Here are a few highlights of our education efforts this year:

The annual Family Heart Global Summit^® is the only conference solely dedicated to aligning stakeholders and catalyzing solutions to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in people with inherited lipid disorders, including FH, homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH), and high lipoprotein(a).

The 2023 Family Heart Global Summit’s meeting theme – Through a Wider Lens: Lipid Management Across Populations and Lifetimes – guided the conversations to discuss:
Why are some innovations not getting adopted?

Why are the adoptions slower for minority populations?

How do we think holistically about these problems?

We brought together over 250 people, including academia, industry, public health stakeholders, and individuals living with inherited lipid disorders. Together we engaged in didactic learning, expert panel discussions, and audience participation “looking through a wider lens” to discuss practical solutions to bridging the gaps of a broken healthcare system. You can check out highlights here.

We have decades of research showing high LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. There are medical guidelines that clearly outline recommended LDL levels and when and how to get there.

Research shows that living with lower LDL for longer is one of the best things you can do to reduce your risk for heart disease and stroke. At the Family Heart Foundation, we call that getting to the Safe Zone.

This year we launched an educational campaign to help people better understand their journey to the LDL Safe Zone.

In September, our HCP Live Program “New Guidance, New Data, and New Targets for the Management of Hyperlipidemia” launched with Dr. Keith Ferdinand, Dr. Erin Michos, Dr. Payal Kohli, Dr. Christie Ballantyne, and Dr. Mary McGowan. The series includes 14 episodes and has been viewed by more than 6,000 healthcare professionals since it launched, including by more than 3,700 in September alone – HCP Live’s highest first month ever!

VIEW PROGRAM >

Pri-Med is an organization that provides continuing education to healthcare professionals, especially primary care clinicians, both virtually and in-person. This year we participated in four sessions – two in person and two virtually. Our in-person sessions were standing room only. All in all, these sessions educated  more than 1,000 healthcare professionals.

The Family Heart Foundation presented research at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Spring meeting in San Antonio, TX.
This analysis showed that there was a 49% increase in total cardiovascular events for those people who spend most of their time in the LDL “Danger Zone” versus the “Safe Zone.” Along with this poster presentation, the Family Heart Foundation also held a well-attended educational session during AMCP.
Additional educational sessions for the payer community were held at the America’s Health Insurance Plan (AHIP) annual meeting in June and at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Nexus meeting in October. Lastly, a dedicated LDL-C webinar in partnership with AHIP took place on December 15.

Over the year, we organized 6 webinars open to everyone in our community. They included forums with updates on FH and/or Lp(a), a run through of our research on the HoFH population in the US, and refresher course to get back to basics with FH. You can view them all here.