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President, Pacific Lipid Association

Pacific Lipid Association names Edward Gill, MD as new president

NLA News Archive

 

March 11-13, 2011
Spring Clinical Lipid Update
Hosted by SWLA and PLA
Hyatt Lost Pines
Austin, TX
More information coming soon.

Message from the incoming president of the Pacific Lipid Association:

Edward A. Gill Jr., MD, FNLA, FAHA, FACC, FASE
President, Pacific Lipid Association
Professor of Medicine (Cardiology)
University of Washington School of Medicine
Director of Echocardiography
Harborview Medical Center
Seattle, WA 98104
Diplomate, American Council on Clinical Lipidology

Dear Friends

I am excited to take over the PLA for the next year and to lead its membership forward. It is not without challenges - significant uncertainties about the future of health care and the growth of the U.S. economy, in general - that we move forward this year. It is also a time when we face difficulties within the academic community with regard to funding and regulatory issues. Despite that, the Pacific Lipid Association and the National Lipid Association remain strong organizations and have formed a list of goals to attain during the next year to help us become more financially independent while providing increased insights into the care of patients with coronary disease and coronary disease equivalents as well as risks for the same.

We held our strategic planning committee meeting in March in Austin, Texas. Among the goals we put forth from that meeting were to: 1) Decrease reliance on industry for funding; 2) Expand leadership; 3) Develop international outreach.

Andrew Cheng, a Cardiology Fellow from our fellowship program at the University of Washington, has been added to our board as a fellow representative and will attend the regional PLA meeting in March 2011.

Despite our clear advancements in the treatment of hyperlipidemia, cardiovascular disease continues to be the No. 1 cause for death in the United States. But there is clear evidence that we are making progress. In the June 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Yeh et. al. show that the incidence of myocardial infarction and, particularly, ST elevation MI, has dramatically decreased in the past decade ⁽¹⁾.

I have a number of goals I would like to see the organization obtain during my time as president. We will re-visit the Lovaza payment issue with Blue Cross of Idaho. I'd like to see significant progress toward guidelines for lipid management, especially related to HDL therapy. I want to develop many additional educational programs throughout the Pacific Region with assistance from the Foundation of the National Lipid Association. This goal will follow in the wake of the past year's increased educational opportunities made possible by Drs. Paul Rosenblit, Rob Greenfield and Nathan Wong, who hosted the first Symposium on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention through Clinical Lipidology in Southern California, and Dr. John Nelsen, who hosted the second annual Central California Cardiometabolic Risk Symposium - Focus on Diabetes in the Central Valley. Both of these events were partially funded through a generous educational grant from theNLA's foundation and were well attended. At our annual meeting, which will be done jointly in Austin, Texas, with the Southwest Lipid Association, Dr. Kathleen Wyne and I will attempt to bring some of the third-party payers to the table to discuss reimbursement for lipid disorders.

Finally, we look forward our next annual national meeting, which will be May 19-21, 2011, in New York City.

1) Yeh RW, Sidney S, Chandra M, Sorel M, Selby J, Population trends in the incidence of outcomes of acute myocardial infarction. N Eng J Med 2010; 362:2155-65

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