Health care disparities in cardiovascular care are a widespread issue and not one likely to go away any time in the near future. In fact, they have the potential to widen even further as the United States' population ages and becomes more racially and ethnically diverse and as more patients enter the health care system with the passage of health care reform. This issue has been discussed at professional conferences and academic institutions and has been researched thoroughly. We all know the problem exists, but unless we do something immediately, even more people will find themselves without the quality cardiovascular care they need. Now is the time that we need to take action.

Clinical studies have demonstrated that cardiologists can reduce disparities in care by adhering to proven guidelines without regard to gender, race, or ethnicity. Recent research from the Registry to Improve the Use of Evidence-Based Heart Failure Therapies in the Outpatient Setting (IMPROVE HF) study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 2010 annual meeting showed that cardiology practices significantly increased the quality of care for heart failure patients equally for men and women when they monitored care and applied a practice-specific performance improvement system to better meet guideline recommendations.

By adhering to the guidelines, we can change the fact that more women die of cardiovascular disease than men, yet women receive only 33% of angioplasties, stents, and bypass surgeries, and that African Americans are 13% less likely to have coronary angioplasty than whites.

To change these statistics, the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC) has launched the Every Patient First Challenge—a new effort aimed at diminishing health disparities. This new initiative is funded through a grant from Medtronic's Every Patient First health equity program designed 3to eliminate health care disparities at the point of care.

The Every Patient First Challenge is designed to improve the overall quality of cardiac care while identifying and addressing racial, ethnic, and gender disparities. This initiative consists of three distinct phases to assess progress in eliminating disparities: baseline assessment, intervention, and postintervention assessment. To ensure the latest evidence-based cardiovascular care guidelines are followed when treating all patients, ABC will provide participating cardiology practices with protocols and tools to increase guideline adherence. ABC has begun identifying geographically diverse sites around the country to participate in the Challenge.

While this is a good first step in reducing health disparities, it is only a small drop in a very large bucket that will soon be overflowing. With the recent passage of health care reform, 32 million new people will flood the health care system, and we fear that these patients will further exacerbate existing disparities. To prevent this from occurring, we are encouraging all cardiologists to take action now by adhering to evidencebased guidelines when determining treatment decisions in interventional cardiology.

It is through action that we will eliminate health disparities and allow cardiovascular care to be provided in an equitable manner, regardless of one's age, gender, race, ethnicity, or primary language. For more information about the Every Patient First Challenge, I encourage you to visit www.abcardio.org, or call Andre Williams at (202) 375-6524.